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Patriot Brief

• Supreme Court declined new Second Amendment cases but kept major gun ban challenges alive

• Short-barreled rifle challenges under the NFA were denied review for now

• Gun and magazine ban cases are likely headed for renewed consideration in 2026

Monday’s Supreme Court orders were one of those moments where nothing happened — and yet a lot is quietly brewing beneath the surface. While the justices declined to take up any new Second Amendment cases outright, they also didn’t slam the door on the ones that actually matter most.

Challenges to state-level bans on AR-15s and so-called “large capacity” magazines are still being held, which strongly suggests the Court isn’t done with them. That tracks with what Justice Kavanaugh hinted at previously — that a hardware ban case was coming, just not on a rushed timetable. The Court appears to be playing the long game, letting lower-court conflicts mature before stepping in.

Meanwhile, denials in the short-barreled rifle cases under the National Firearms Act don’t mean those arguments were weak. They mean the Court likely wants to settle the broader issue of whether commonly owned firearms can be banned at all before dealing with barrel lengths and tax schemes.

For gun owners, this wasn’t a loss — it was a holding pattern. And sometimes, that’s exactly how big rulings are set up.

From Bearing Arms:

The Supreme Court didn’t grant cert to any Second Amendment cases in its orders list released on Monday, but they did keep ahold of several challenges to state-level gun and magazine bans as well as several prohibited persons cases.

The justices also denied cert to a pair of challenges to the National Firearms Act’s restrictions on short-barreled rifles, as well as the appeal of a Pennsylvania father who was hoping to revive a lawsuit against a gun maker and gun seller holding them civilly liable for the death of his son.

Robinson v. U.S. and Rush v. U.S had drawn attention from a number of Second Amendment groups including Gun Owners of America and Second Amendment Foundation, which filed amicus briefs in support of the cert petitions urging the Court to take one or both cases. The groups obviously were hoping that the Supreme Court would declare that short-barreled rifles are arms protected by the Second Amendment, but also pointed out multiple flaws in the rationale deployed by lower courts in upholding the NFA’s restrictions.

The brief filed by GOA and a number of state-level 2A groups in Robinson, for instance, noted the lower courts’ description of the NFA as a “shall issue” licensing system akin to concealed carry regimes.

The brief went on to point out that there’s a circuit court split on the description of the NFA as a “shall issue” scheme, but apparently the justices are willing to let that split develop before taking up an NFA case.

The 2A groups also argued that the lower courts are misapplying the Miller decision from the 1930s. The Second Amendment Foundation’s brief in Rush, joined by the 2A Law Center and several other pro-2A organizations, contended that Miller is no longer controlling after the Bruen decision, but even if its still legally valid “the Petitioner should have prevailed below under its framework too.”

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