Amy Swearer writes for the Daily Signal about the U.S. Supreme Court’s disappointing disinterest in important Second Amendment cases.
When the Supreme Court earlier this spring dismissed a New York gun case from its docket without ruling on the merits, disappointed Second Amendment advocates still had high hopes.
After all, even though the court hadn’t decided a meaningful Second Amendment case in more than a decade, at least four justices had recently signaled their desire to do so in the near future.
We comforted ourselves with reminders that the court had plenty of pending Second Amendment cases it could take up for next term. Many of them provided even better opportunities for protecting the right to keep and bear arms. …
… Unfortunately, the court this week dealt a serious blow to hopes that it would hear a Second Amendment case in its next term, denying certiorari in all the gun-related cases pending before it.
In laymen’s terms, the court effectively said, “We will not review the lower court decisions upholding these constitutionally questionable gun control laws.”
Of course, the court could decide later this year to grant certiorari in a different Second Amendment case that has not yet been filed. But the reality is that the justices were presented with a perfect opportunity unlikely to repeat itself later this term, and still declined to take up a case.
That does not bode well for the near future.
To put it bluntly, the justices had their pick of the litter. There was a slew of excellent cases to choose from, representing a wide variety of Second Amendment issues from different states and with different plaintiffs. …
… This was, at a fundamental level, another abdication by the court in which it once again declined to do its job of saying what the law is with respect to the Second Amendment.