Melissa Quinn of the Washington Examiner reports on U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’ criticism of his colleagues’ approach to gun rights.
Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas criticized the high court after the justices denied a petition to hear a case challenging a California law requiring a 10-day waiting period for gun sales, saying the Second Amendment is a “disfavored right” and the Supreme Court’s “constitutional orphan.”
The case challenged the constitutionality of California’s “cooling-off period,” which requires gun purchasers wait 10 days before they can bring their firearm home. The waiting period applies to those who already have a concealed-carry license in the state and who have firearms registered.
On Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Court denied a petition from plantiffs Jeff Silvester and Brandon Combs to hear the case.
Thomas said in his dissent he would have allowed the high court to take up the case, and said the decision from the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is “symptomatic of the lower courts’ general failure to afford the Second Amendment the respect due an enumerated constitutional right.”
“If a lower court treated another right so cavalierly,” Thomas wrote in his dissent, “I have little doubt that this Court would intervene. But as evidenced by our continued inaction in this area, the Second Amendment is a disfavored right in this Court.”
