Fitch joins attorneys general in asking SCOTUS to take up gun case

Sept. 27, 2024 – Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch has joined Idaho Attorney General Raúl Labrador and 27 other states in filing an amicus brief with the Supreme Court of the United States which they said was in defense of the Second Amendment.

The brief supports a petition for writ of certiorari, asking the Court to take up the case of Snope v. Brown, in which the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld Maryland’s unconstitutional ban on hundreds of styles of firearms, including the AR-15, the most popular modern semi-automatic sporting rifle in America. 

“The language of the Second Amendment is unambiguous and clear,” Fitch said. “The Fourth Circuit’s decision undermines both individual rights and the very principles of our Second Amendment.”

Fitch said The Fourth Circuit decision flies in the face of recent SCOTUS decisions, including Bruen and Heller, which clearly defined “bearable arms” as any weapon possessed or carried for offensive or defensive action in a case of conflict. Relying on sparse and irrelevant historical evidence, including some that the Supreme Court has already considered and rejected, the Fourth Circuit erroneously concluded this nation has a tradition of banning the possession of commonly owned firearms like the AR-15.

The brief argues, “…there is no principled distinction between weapons that are ‘for military use’ and weapons that are ‘for private use.’ By pretending otherwise, the Fourth Circuit authorizes itself to ignore the Second Amendment whenever it thinks a weapon looks too much like a soldier’s. And this leaves citizens, businesses, and regulators guessing as to what supposedly makes an arm ‘most useful in military service’ – after all the Fourth Circuit said that even weapons with only semi-automatic capabilities may be considered best suited for the military…even if the military does not actually use such weapons.”

Joining Fitch and Idaho’s Attorney General Labrador in this effort are attorneys general from: Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, West Virginia, Wyoming, as well as the Arizona and Wisconsin Legislatures.