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The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to take up a controversial case out of Illinois that effectively upheld a ban on assault weapons as consistent with the Second Amendment. The court's order didn't explain the reasoning behind the decision, but two justices, Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia, split with their colleagues and laid out why they would've agreed to hear the case.



Pointing to the Supreme Court's decisions in District of Columbia v. Heller and McDonald v. Chicago -- which extended the "personal right to keep and bear arms for lawful purposes, most notably for self-defense within the home" -- Thomas said the Illinois decision treated "the Second Amendment as a second-class right." "There is no basis for a different result when our Second Amendment precedents are at stake," Thomas wrote.

The move by the justices comes amid renewed calls for gun control in the wake of last week's mass shooting in San Bernardino, California. During a rare Oval Office address on Sunday, President Barack Obama again urged Congress to enact gun control measures. The Supreme Court's refusal to hear the case could be read as an indication of justices' unwillingness to further define the contours of the Second Amendment in light of the current political climate.

In the 2008 Heller decision, the court warned that the amendment didn't stand for a "right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose," and noted the "longstanding" and "historical tradition of prohibiting the carrying of dangerous and unusual weapons."

The case the court declined to hear on Monday stemmed from a local ordinance in the city of Highland Park, Illinois, that banned "assault weapons" -- defined as any semi-automatic firearm that accepts large-capacity magazines and possesses a number of specialized features. Gun rights advocates attacked the ordinance as unconstitutional. But eventually, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit upheld the ban -- and essentially invited the Supreme Court to clarify whether the scope of the Second Amendment should be extended to include the prohibited weapons.


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