The Supreme Court has vacated a Massachusetts court’s ruling on a gun control law that restricted the ability to purchase and possess handguns.
The nation’s high court ordered the lower court to reconsider the decision in Morin v. Lyver that challenged a Massachusetts law covering the purchase and ownership of handguns, according to Fox News.
Included in the law’s restrictions was the need for residents to have a handgun license to purchase a gun and also includes banning anyone convicted of nonviolent misdemeanors from ever purchasing or possessing a gun.
The court’s decision to require that the lower court reconsider the case is consistent with its landmark ruling from the last term where they decided in a 6-3 vote that the New York law requiring people to demonstrate “proper cause” to get a concealed handgun permit was unconstitutional.
Justice Clarence Thomas wrote for the majority at the time saying, “The constitutional right to bear arms in public for self-defense is not ‘a second-class right, subject to an entirely different body of rules than the other Bill of Rights guarantees.’ We know of no other constitutional right that an individual may exercise only after demonstrating to government officers some special need.”
In regard to this week’s Supreme Court decision, the U.S. District Court in Massachusetts initially found its state law to be constitutional, but upon appeal, the Supreme Court ordered that their ruling be vacated, per Fox News.
According to the outlet, the Supreme Court sent the case to be “remanded to the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit for further consideration in light of New York State Rifle & Pistol Assn., Inc. v. Bruen.”
The court’s decision came after Second Amendment activists were handed a defeat earlier this week when the Supreme Court declined to hear challenges to the bump stock ban, according to CBS News.
The ban was put into place following the Law Vegas, Nevada, music festival shooting in 2017 that ended in the deaths of 58 people, and the injury of 850 more.