US court to act on assault weapon bans

The Connecticut and New York laws prohibit semi-automatic weapons like the one used by the gunman who fatally shot 49 people at a gay night club in Orlando in the deadliest mass shooting in modern US history. The Supreme Court will announce as soon as Monday whether it will hear the challenge brought by gun rights groups and individual firearms owners asserting that the laws violate the US Constitution’s Second Amendment guarantee of the right to bear arms. 

The court has not decided a major gun case since 2010. If they take up the matter, the justices would hear arguments in their next term, which begins in October. A decision not to hear the challenge would leave in place lower-court rulings upholding the laws. The court’s action in another recent appeal indicated it may be disinclined to take up the matter. The justices in December opted not to hear a challenge to a Highland Park, Illinois ordinance banning assault weapons and large-capacity magazines.

A national assault weapons ban expired in 2004. Congressional Republicans, backed by the influential National Rifle Association gun rights lobby, beat back efforts to restore it. Some states and municipalities have enacted their own bans.