More Cases in the Hopper

Emily Miller talks to Alan Gura about the rejection of Wollard v. Gallagher, who notes there are still a number of cases in the hopper. I’d note that any speculation about why the Court keeps rejecting certiorari for carry cases is just that: speculation. There are a list of reasons a mile long why the Court may not want to grant cert. We’ve speculated on the whys, but reality is we don’t really know. Maybe the Court doesn’t want a carry case. Maybe they want to see how all the circuit courts play out. Maybe the giant spinning wheel of fortune they use to pick cases for the term just hasn’t landed on a carry case yet.* Maybe they don’t have 5 votes to win carry because someone got soft in the mean time. We don’t really know.

* OK, they probably don’t select cases that way.

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6 thoughts on “More Cases in the Hopper”

  1. Unrestricted carry may very well be beyond where this Court was ever willing to go. Just as our opponents have ignored the the spirit of Heller, we have ignored the text of Section III (“[N]othing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions…”). Those caveats were always incompatible with idea that there was a solid majority of Justices in favor of an expansive interpretation of the Second Amendment (the so-called “Heller Five”).

    Within the next year, we’ll know for sure whether or not this Court is willing to embrace a robust right to carry arms in public. But the trend is clear, so it’s time to move on with litigation that challenges other laws that restrict important Second Amendment rights – laws that this Court might be more inclined to overturn.

    1. What other likely to move litigation is needed that isn’t already underway in one pipeline or another?

      As I can recall we have ongoing challenges to non-citizen/non-resident laws, 18 year old handgun FFL purchases, and restrictions on interstate handgun purchases.

      There are challenges to non-violent felony and misdemeanor bans ongoing.

      The NFA stuff is part and parcel of the “longstanding prohibitions” verbiage and is likely to take Legislative action to fix, as is a repeal of the “sporting purposes” test.

      Are we talking about more cases being filed on the above, or am I missing something entirely?

      1. The NRA stands alone in pursuing an “all of the above” litigation strategy. Other groups, notably the SAF and their affiliates such as The Calguns Foundation, have repeatedly delayed action on other issues because their avowed first (and only) priority is judicial enforcement of nationwide “shall issue” carry. The result is that litigation challenging handgun rosters, assault weapon bans, magazine capacity limits, commerce restrictions, etc., has languished for years, with little or no action since the filing of initial complaints in the post-McDonald heydays of 2010.

  2. It takes four to grant cert; if the tide had shifted to anti-carry in an obvious way behind the scenes, you would have probably seen the liberal bench vote for the cert to end the question. But there is always the chance that they need a special case with a limited question that will tip someone like Roberts or Kennedy the right direction.

    Or maybe they just don’t want to set the “every two year, another 2A case rule”. It’s as good a guess as any…

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