Supreme Court won’t rule on carrying guns in public – USA TODAY

Gun rights advocates gathered outside the Utah State Capitol for Gun Appreciation Day in Salt Lake City in 2013.(Photo: Rick Bowmer, AP)

WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court refusedMonday to take on the next big battle over the Second Amendment: carrying guns in public.

The justices won'theara challenge to a California law that limits who can carry a concealed gun in public -- a restrictionthat proponents of gun rights consider unconstitutional, but which the high court has yet to decide.

In a related case, the justices also refused to hear the federal government's appeal of a lower court ruling that allowed two men with criminal records to win back their right to possess firearms despite a lifetime federal ban. Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor said they would have heard the case.

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On the guns-in-public case, Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch dissented,arguing that a landmark Supreme Court decision in 2008 upholding the right to keep guns at home suggested that the right extends beyond the home.

"I find it extremely improbable that the Framers understood the Second Amendment to protect little more than carrying a gun from the bedroom to the kitchen," Thomas wrote for the pair.

It's been nine years since the court upheld the right to keep handguns at home for self-defense, in what was perhaps the most important opinion written by the late Justice Antonin Scalia. Two years later, the court extended that right to states and localities.

Since then, however, the court has avoided most Second Amendment cases, including those challenging state and local assault weapons bans, firearms protections, and restrictions on young adults. In 2014, it declined to consider a challenge to a New Jersey law that restricts most residents from carrying guns in public.

Most states currently allow guns outside the home with few restrictions. But in states that do limit carrying guns openly or in concealed fashion --including Illinois, Maryland, New Jersey and New York --lower courts have almost always upheld those restrictions.

Most recently, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit last June upheld the California law by a 7-4 vote, reversing a 2014 ruling from a three-judge panel that had struck down restrictions imposed by two of the state's counties, based on California law.

"We hold that the Second Amendment does not protect, in any degree, the carrying of concealed firearms by members of the general public," Judge William Fletcher wrote for the majority.

California's law, like those ineight other states and the District of Columbia, generally requires citizens to show "good cause" before being granted a concealed-carry license. In other states, licenses are issued to most citizens without felony convictions who are not considered dangerous or mentally unstable.

Judge ConsueloCallahan's main dissent contended that the law's wide berth has the effect of banning any guns in public. "While states may choose between different manners of bearing arms for self-defense, the right must be accommodated," she wrote.

The battle over gun rights pits the National Rifle Association and other firearms proponents against gun-control groups such as the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, created in the aftermath of the 1981 assassinationattempt on President Ronald Reagan that severely wounded his press secretary, Jim Brady.

The appeals court ruling does not affect states within its jurisdiction that have more liberal gun-totinglaws; it merely allows more liberal states, such as California, to impose tougher restrictions.

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Supreme Court won't rule on carrying guns in public - USA TODAY