SCOTUS refuses to hear San Francisco gun case

The Supreme Court declined to hear a case Monday regarding San Francisco’s gun law that requires firearm owners to keep their weapons stored in a lockbox or secured with a trigger lock.

The Washington Post reported that the Supreme Court rejected the case despite previous rulings that supported gun ownership over local and state government regulations.

This attempted appeal to the Supreme Court stems from a March 25 decision by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling in favor of the law in Jackson v. San Francisco. The lower court said the law, “does not substantially burden the right or ability to use firearms for self-defense in the home.”

Gun activists hoped for a summary reversal that allows the Court to overturn a lower court’s ruling without hearing any oral arguments or additional briefing. Had the Supreme Court taken the case it would have provided guidance based upon previous rulings that stated the Second Amendment protects individuals right to own firearms for self-defense.

This precedent was created in 2008 when the Supreme Court struck down the gun control law in District of Columbia v. Heller.

The Washington D.C. law that was found unconstitutional had a near a total ban on handguns as well as restrictions on how they must store the firearms. San Francisco’s law, while similar, doesn’t go as far even though the plaintiffs said the laws were the same.

Justices Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia agreed with the challengers of the San Francisco law and said that the Court should have ruled on the case. Thomas wrote the dissent and eviscerated his fellow justices.

“Nothing in our decision in Heller suggested that a law must rise to the level of the absolute prohibition at issue in that case to constitute a “substantial burden” on the core of the Second Amendment right. And when a law burdens a constitutionally protected right, we have generally required a higher showing than the Court of Appeals demanded here. The Court’s refusal to review this decision is difficult to account for in light of its repeated willingness to review splitless decisions involving alleged violations of other constitutional rights,” wrote Thomas.

“(The San Francisco law) allows residents to use their handguns for the purpose of self-defense, but it prohibits them from keeping those handguns operable for the purpose of immediate self-defense.”