The U.S. Supreme Court this week moved to broaden constitutional protections for keeping and bearing arms, issuing two rulings that constrain the authority of federal and state firearms restrictions and signaling a willingness to consider additional Second Amendment disputes next term.
In a 6-3 decision on Thursday, supported by the court’s conservative majority, the justices invalidated a Hawaii statute that required a gun owner to obtain the permission of a property owner before bringing a handgun onto private property that is nonetheless open to the public - locations such as most businesses. Separately, the court delivered a unanimous decision last week that curtailed the reach of a long-standing federal ban on firearm possession by certain drug users, effectively narrowing an avenue of enforcement that had put the firearm rights of millions of Americans who use marijuana at risk.
Taken together, the rulings reflect the court’s generally favorable posture toward Second Amendment claims at a time when political debate over firearm violence - including frequent mass shootings - remains intense. Legal analysts described the decisions as reinforcing an exacting judicial framework that gun-control laws must meet to survive constitutional challenge.
How the court applied its standard
Both of the recent decisions were evaluated using the legal test that originated in the Supreme Court’s 2022 ruling in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen. Under that standard, commonly referred to as the Bruen test, a challenged gun-control measure must be "consistent with this nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation" to pass constitutional muster. The test rejects an approach based solely on whether a law advances an important government interest, and instead looks for historical analogues to justify modern restrictions.
Applying Bruen in a 2024 case, U.S. v. Rahimi, the justices in an 8-1 ruling upheld a federal statute that makes it a crime for individuals subject to domestic violence restraining orders to possess firearms. That decision remains, according to court observers, the only instance in which a law has been sustained by the Supreme Court under Bruen without being narrowly interpreted or constrained.
Reactions from legal experts and advocates
Jacob Charles, a professor at the Pepperdine University Caruso School of Law, said the two new rulings "confirm the court’s extreme skepticism about all manner of gun regulations, especially new ones." He added that the court has fashioned a test that makes it extremely hard for legislatures to enact gun rules intended to protect citizens.
"It has created and elaborated a test that makes it exceedingly difficult for legislatures to create gun laws to protect their citizens," Charles said.
Gun rights organizations, buoyed by their recent successes, urged the court to accept additional cases when the next term begins in October. The justices met for their weekly private conference on Thursday; among the appeals under consideration are challenges to state limits on assault-style rifles such as AR-15s, restrictions on large-capacity ammunition magazines, and a challenge to a federal ban that prevents federally licensed firearms dealers from selling handguns to adults under the age of 21. Any of those cases could be granted for argument as soon as Monday.
Stephen Stamboulieh, an attorney with Gun Owners of America, urged the court to take up an AR-15 and magazine case, saying it is "critical that the Supreme Court take an AR-15 and magazine case and end the lower courts’ rebellion against the court’s precedents."
The court last year declined to hear certain appeals in similar lawsuits; three conservative justices formally objected to that refusal. Justice Brett Kavanaugh, one of the conservative justices, previously signaled sympathy with the argument that AR-15s are in common use by law-abiding citizens and therefore are protected by the Second Amendment. He said the court "presumably will address the AR-15 issue soon."
Points of disagreement on the bench
Liberal Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote a dissent in one of the recent rulings, accusing the court’s conservative majority of having "manipulated" the Bruen test "into a free-for-all that lets the judiciary thwart the will of legislatures by privileging access to firearms above all else." Her dissent underscored the deep divisions among the justices about how to balance historic tradition with contemporary policy aims.
Some conservative members of the court have argued that the right to keep and bear arms should not be treated as subordinate to other constitutional protections. Pepperdine’s Charles rejected a claim by some conservatives that the Second Amendment was being relegated to a "second-class right," saying instead that recent doctrinal developments have elevated the amendment "far above a first-class right."
Legal distinctions drawn by the court
Experts noted that the Rahimi decision stands apart from the two most recent rulings because of the perceived dangerousness of the population it affects. David Kopel of the Independence Institute said the decision in Rahimi was rooted in concerns about domestic abusers, whereas the plaintiffs in the more recent cases - people who use marijuana and holders of concealed-carry permits - were characterized as "not dangerous" by his assessment of the court’s reasoning. Kopel argued that the Bruen framework points toward a dangerousness standard to determine when some Americans can be disarmed.
Hawaii officials had defended their law as an effort to strike a balance between the right to bear arms and property owners’ rights to exclude firearms from their premises. The court, however, concluded that the statute did not survive constitutional scrutiny under the principles it has applied.
Implications and next steps
The recent rulings tighten the constitutional bar that gun-control measures must clear in order to be upheld. With multiple high-profile appeals pending and the justices weighing whether to accept them for the coming term, the Supreme Court’s next decisions could further define the limits of permissible regulation, especially for assault-style rifles, magazine capacity limits and age-based restrictions tied to federally licensed dealers.
As the court approaches the end of a term that began last October and prepares for the October start of the next term, litigants and policymakers will be watching closely for whether the justices choose to expand the scope of their Second Amendment jurisprudence even further.