The Supreme Court rejected the appeals of gun owners in two cases on Monday morning, leaving in place the state of Maryland’s Handgun Qualification License, as well as a Third Circuit Court of Appeals decision that denied an injunction against the state of Delaware’s ban on so-called assault weapons and large capacity magazines. 

SCOTUS did not take action on two other cases involving bans on commonly possessed arms, however. Snope v. Brown, a challenge to Maryland’s ban on semi-automatic long guns, and Ocean State Tactical v. Neronha, a challenge to Rhode Island’s ban on “large capacity’ magazines, will likely be relisted for this week’s conference. The Fourth Circuit previously upheld Maryland’s gun ban, ruling that the prohibition on commonly owned semi-automatic firearms doesn’t violate the Second Amendment because the arms in question are “like” machine guns and fall outside the scope of the right to keep and bear arms, while the First Circuit upheld Rhode Island’s magazine ban under the similarly specious argument that magazines (no matter their capacity) aren’t arms that are protected by the Second Amendment at all.  

The Fourth Circuit also previously signed off on Maryland’s Handgun Qualification License in a lawsuit brought by Maryland Shall Issue, Atlantic Guns, and two individual plaintiffs. As they noted in their lawsuit, Maryland’s law not only requires individuals to obtain a license before they can keep a handgun in their home, it also imposes a defacto 30-day waiting period on the exercise of our Second Amendment rights. The Fourth Circuit held that the handgun licensing law doesn’t infringe on the right to keep and bear arms, arguing that the Second Amendment’s textual protections only apply if the law in question is “so abusive as to ‘effectively den[y]’ a person the right to keep and bear arms entirely.

If the Court wants to address the broad prohibitions on commonly possessed arms it can still do so by granting cert to Snope and Ocean State Tactical, and the fact that they weren’t denied cert today could be a sign that acceptance is coming. There’s no guarantee that’s the case, however. 

Def a huge possibility. Perhaps the odds on favorite.

— Kostas Moros (@MorosKostas) January 13, 2025

Second Amendment attorney Mark Smith offered a more optimistic take on today’s news. 

We hope that SCOTUS has decided to grant cert in Snope and/or Ocean State, and that they are spending this week reviewing the cases for procedural or jurisdictional defects. This defect check is standard operating procedure for SCOTUS if they intend to grant cert in a case. It…

— Mark W. Smith/#2A Scholar (@fourboxesdiner) January 13, 2025

Smith also pointed out that Gray v. Jennings was appealed to SCOTUS after a preliminary injunction was denied, so the case has yet to be decided on the merits. SCOTUS has turned away virtually every appeal of a 2A case since Bruen that hasn’t been fully decided on the merits, so denying cert in the Delaware case isn’t a complete surprise, even if it is a disappointing development. 

The Court’s refusal to consider Maryland’s Handgun Qualification License is also a bitter disappointment. Though the law is ostensibly “shall issue” in design, the built-in delays and licensing mandates to merely keep a gun in the home arguably constitute an outright infringement on our Second Amendment rights, and it’s both puzzling and concerning that the Court decided to keep the law in place without even a written dissent by justices like Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, or Neil Gorsuch. 

Are there four votes to grant cert to a case challenging an “assault weapon” or magazine ban? In theory, yes, but if there’s not a fifth vote in favor of striking down those bans those justices may very well decide it’s better to deny cert than to risk a precedential decision upholding those bans. We’ll have to wait at least another week to see what SCOTUS decides, and at this point I’d say there’s at least as much cause for concern as optimism.