Justice Kavanaugh to Second Amendment: We're Really Busy Now, Come Back In A Year Or Two

On December 1, 2020, the Maryland ban on AR-15s was challenged. The plaintiffs lost in the District Court and before the Fourth Circuit. In August 2024, a cert petition was filed in Snope v. Brown . The petition sat in purgatory for nearly a year with fourteen relists .

Today, the Supreme Court finally put the petition out of its misery and denied cert. Justices Thomas, Alito, and Gorsuch would have granted. Justice Barrett, as usual said nothing. Justice Kavanaugh wrote a very unusual statement respecting the denial of the petition. The first two paragraphs explain why the Maryland decision was "questionable." If you read these parts, you would expect a grant. Indeed, Kavanaugh as circuit judge had found that the District of Columbia's ban on AR-15s was unconstitutional. But then, we get