Below is my column in The Hill on the announcement from Justice Samuel Alito that he is sticking around. Even a cursory review of the docket explains why Alito is not eager to depart despite the wishful thinking of folks at National Public Radio.
Here is the column:
Justice Samuel Alito is not done yet.
A month after National Public Radio’s Nina Totenberg announced that Sam Alito was retiring (a story NPR later had to retract), the 76-year-old jurist told the Wall Street Journal in an interview, “Obviously, I’m here for another term.”
Looking at the docket for the coming term, it is easy to see why. Even after overturning Roe v. Wade and other historic opinions, Alito still has unfinished business. An example can be found in two cases involving bans on semiautomatic rifles like the AR-15 that are now awaiting argument in the October term.
Many of us have been frustrated by the Court’s failure to address these laws barring AR-15s and other weapons. Just last year, the Supreme Court declined review of such a Maryland law. Alito and Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch indicated that they wanted to hear the case, falling just one vote short of granting certiorari.
Notably, the required fourth vote could have come from Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who called the Fourth Circuit’s ruling in Snopes v. Brown “questionable” and added that the Court “should and presumably will address the AR-15 issue soon, in the next Term or two.”
Now, it will.
Democrats are moving in various states to ban the nation’s most popular rifle (the AR-15) and its most popular handgun (the semiautomatic 9mm). Some of us view these laws as presumptively unconstitutional.
In 2008, the court declared in its opinion in Heller that gun ownership is an individual right. The court emphasized how these weapons were in common use and not the type of dangerous or unusual weapon that would fall outside of the Second Amendment. Handguns, the opinion reads, “are the most popular weapon chosen by Americans for self-defense in the home, and a complete prohibition of their use is invalid.”
In 2022, the Court held in the Bruen case that the government bears the burden of demonstrating that any restriction upon the right to keep and bear arms “is consistent with this Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.”
The bans on Glock handguns and semiautomatic rifles are efforts to achieve indirectly what the Supreme Court barred directly. In Virginia, Gov. Abigail Spanberger (D) immediately moved against gun rights after her election. Ironically, her election not only spurred a massive surge in gun purchases, but she then supplied the lead line of briefs challenging the law. Spanberger admitted that the state law she signed would ban commonly used hunting guns.
In what is known as the court’s “clean-up conference,” the justices granted review in Illinois and Connecticut cases challenging bans on semiautomatic rifles.
In Viramontes v. Cook County, the Seventh Circuit relied on an earlier ruling that gun owners had failed to show “that the covered firearms materially differed from machine guns and military-grade weaponry, which the Supreme Court instructed can be banned under the Second Amendment.”
In Grant v. Higgins, the Second Circuit upheld a similar ban after agreeing with the state that the law imposes “a burden comparable to historical antecedents that regulated other unusually dangerous weapons unsuitable for and disproportionate to the objective of individual self-defense.”
Notably, in the Illinois case, Cook County argued that these are not just unusually dangerous weapons, but that the challengers cannot offer “even a single instance in which assault weapons were ever used in lawful self-defense.”
That is a highly dubious claim. Since 1990, there have been an estimated 32,091,000 Modern Sporting Rifles in circulation. These are semiautomatic models, which means they fire a single bullet and then automatically load another cartridge into the chamber. The AR-15 is the most popular model, and there are estimates that it has as many as 25 million owners.
The popularity of the AR-15 is due to the fact that it is modular, with some models allowing one to swap out barrels, bolts and high-capacity magazines, or add a variety of accessories. It is also not the most powerful gun; many guns have equal or greater calibers.
There is roughly the same number of Glock pistols in circulation. That means perhaps 40 million Americans currently possess weapons that Democrats are trying to ban as unusually dangerous and completely unprotected.
With the granting of these cases, Virginia’s ban on new sales of the AR-15 rifle and other guns will have to await the final decisions.
These gun bans are not the only cases involving politically popular, legally dubious legislation. The first case to be argued will be Suncor Energy v. Commissioners of Boulder County, a challenge to state laws imposing damages on fossil fuel companies for climate change.
With a docket like that, one can see why Alito is not going anywhere.
Jonathan Turley is a law professor and the New York Times best-selling author of “Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution.”
SCOTUS Should Address Deportations
More than 16,000 times in the past year, judges have ruled against ICE’s detention tactics. About two-thirds of those rulings stemmed from the policy change in that two-page memo, which broadened the reach of a 1996 detention statute in ways no prior administration had ever attempted.
The flood of cases has stretched the judiciary to a breaking point across the country. Thousands of rulings, from hundreds of judges rushing to respond to the individual cases in front of them, have added up to an overwhelming rebuke of Trump’s unprecedented policy.
The Trump administration has defended the new policy and brushed off the courts’ overwhelming rejection of it, attributing its losses to “activist judges” and arguing that it’ll be vindicated in appeals and by the Supreme Court.
The July 8, 2025, two-page memo from ICE’s acting director, Todd Lyons, sounded innocuous enough: “Interim Guidance Regarding Detention Authority.”
But it was the beginning of an all-out siege on the American justice system — one that would upend tens of thousands of lives, fracture decades of trust between the courts and the Justice Department, overwhelm court dockets in every corner of the country. Soon, it will reach the Supreme Court.
https://www.politico.com/news/2026/08/10/ice-detentions-trump-administration-01027440
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SCOTUS sends confusing signals regarding deportations. Apparently ICE is just doing its own thing. And too often ICE loses in court. Yet ICE keeps doing its own thing.
Where is SCOTUS on this?
Activist judges are trying to flood the zone, whether there is any merit at all to your comment or not. Even if the Supremes rule against your judges, your judges will continue to operate defiant of the law. You are obstructionists on an 80/20 issue.
Due process. The judges are following due process requirements and noting that ICE is violating the law.
ICE is flooding the zone with arrests on people who are awaiting the government to respond to their requests, even arresting them in the hallway awaiting taking the oath of citizenship, having met all the requirements to become a citizen. ICE is doing this to goose their numbers because going after violent immigrants is a hard job and ICE isn’t interested in protecting Americans from them when easy targets who have kept up with every requirement are available, the ones following the process.
ATS your off in lala land.
While I doubt you 16,000 claim – absolutely a tiny handful of left wing activist judge are interfering with deportations
A tiny bit. Nearly All judges are correctly finding that as illegals have no right to be here they have little due process.
Due process protects rights, Property, Liberty, life. If all you are losing is something you have no right to there is no due process involved.
As is typical on the left you fixate on a memo that was never released and is actually correct.
It is guidance on when ICE needs a warrant, and when it specifically needs a judicial warrant and it is based on US case law over the past 3 decades.
Regardless public support for mass deportations has risen 6pts over the past year according to harvard/harris polling.
And that is why ICE has disapeared from the news. It is losing politics.
Let me know when you hear Paul Revere, will ya?
It’s interesting that the 4th Circuit decision on Snopes v Brown came up. I read the part of the decision where the court upheld Maryland’s ban. I noted no citation of supporting law, but a catalog of fairy tales and suppositions unsupported by facts. Also, per the FBIs Uniform Crime Report, “assault weapons” don’t kill as many as those using either bare hands/feet or common house hold items, like shovels, ball bats etc.
Without getting into great detail, THE defining difference between the AR15 and the M4, M16, M27, HK416 etc, is no capability of full automatic fire. It isn’t a machine gun. Nor can you drop in the parts to make it one.
Perhaps if we all properly raised our children and likewise acted as reasonable people we wouldn’t have many of the problems we have now.
If there are only a million bears, with two arms each, then there are only two million bear arms to go around.
I see what you did here⬆️ … 😂
Did you enjoy banging your sister doggy style?
Thank God for Sam A.
They think they are fooling us.
The Second Amendment states plainly:
“The right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
Does prohibiting the manufacture and sale of arms infringe upon Americans’ right to keep and bear arms?
The language is unqualified. The Amendment does not say the right may be infringed under certain circumstances or subject to certain conditions. It says the right “shall not be infringed.”
Therefore, prohibiting the manufacture and sale of arms necessarily infringes upon the right to keep and bear arms.
The language is qualified….you stripped out the Preamble which sets out Common Defense via Militias as the driving rationale for “the people” needing to remain well-armed. You’ve twisted 2A into a absolute individual right.
It never was such, The Militia Captains could disarm the habitually drunk, the immature, the senile, the mentally ill, etc — and they did by their authority to assure discipline and morale (“a well-regulated militia”).
That argument does not follow from the text.
The Second Amendment contains a prefatory clause—“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State”—but the operative clause states the right plainly: “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
The prefatory clause explains why the right was considered important; it does not say that the right exists only for members of a militia, nor does it authorize the government to impose qualifications or restrictions on the right.
Moreover, “well regulated” does not mean “government-regulated” in the modern sense of licensing, restricting, or prohibiting the exercise of a right. In the constitutional context, it describes a militia that is properly organized, equipped, trained, and disciplined.
And the historical claim about militia captains disarming particular individuals does not establish a constitutional power to prohibit the manufacture or sale of arms. Even if a militia authority could impose discipline on its own members, that is an entirely different proposition from government prohibiting Americans generally from acquiring arms.
Most importantly, the operative language contains no qualification whatsoever. It does not say, “The right of militia members to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed,” or “The right shall not be infringed except as necessary for public safety.” It says “the right of the people” and “shall not be infringed.”
So the question remains exactly the one posed: If the government prohibits the manufacture and sale of arms, how can Americans exercise a right to keep and bear arms without access to arms?
You cannot turn a prefatory statement of purpose into an express limitation that the operative text does not contain.
I have never read a better reasoning against the old argument that the right to bear arms is for a militia. Well done
injun2 – Grammar is also an excellent argument. Our founders were literate. If they had actually sought to limit the right to militias they would not have written the 2A with an inoperative preferatory clause.
In fact they would not have written the 2A at all.
In the entirety of history When has a government – state or federal tried to disarm its own militia ?
Finally RIGHTS by definition belong to INDIVIDUALS. Governments have powers.
Contra some even on the right -the 10th amendment secures the POWERS of the states – NOT the rights of the states. States have no rights. They have POWERS.
Our founders were articulate. They did not confuse rights with powers. They did not confuses the people with government.
GSX’s argument was removed from the blog; the right to wear shortsleeves shall not be infringed.
“That argument does not . . .”
Excellent analysis of the language. Thank you.
That is a well-reasoned breakdown of the 2nd amendment into a prefatory statement and the operative clause.
I think many had the mindset of thinking of colonial militias as a standing army; permanent and paid. It isn’t. Basically, the militia consisted of a specified age group of men who were supposed to maintain their fighting ability.
The point of the 2nd Amendment is to prevent control over firearms from ever becoming centralized — but while also keeping weapons use disciplined, responsible and orderly.
A school massacre every 2 weeks means we’re failing at disciplined, responsible and orderly.
A system of young gun owners needing an older adult sponsor makes sense. It injects a missing degree of loose supervision, and acculturation into safe and sane gun ownership.
Much preferable idea to government trying to regulate firearms.
A massacre is a crime you ——- idiot. No one is supposed to do it or allowed to do it. You shouldn’t be allowed to come anywhere near governance or a polling place to vote. The Greeks restricted the vote when they created democracy in 508 B.C. You would not have been allowed to vote then, and you and your ilk should never be allowed to vote now. That is the entire problem in America.
Pb, respect for human life should take care of it?
ATS – both generally and in the case of the 2A preambles or prefaces do not condition operative clauses.
As to your history – you are full of schiff.
In much of the colonies, if you were between 16-45 you were required to own a firearm. A PERSONAL firearm.
Militia Capitan’s did not disarm you when you were Drunk. Sherrif’s did, and they returned your gun when you were sober.
In the founding era “millitia” meant every white male from 16-45. All were subject to being called up, and they were required to show up with their rifle.
The second amendment is the only reason we are not under communism today.
“Many of us have been frustrated by the Court’s failure to address these laws barring AR-15s and other weapons.” . . . and, many of us have been frustrated about seeing body bags leave children’s schools.
Those body bags leaving the highways are what, chopped liver?
43,000 highway deaths per year.
BAN CARS, right?
Disingenuous much?
Yes, it’s that stupid!
Because we tolerate 43,000 traffic deaths per year, it’s only right that we tolerate 43,000 gun deaths per year. Fair is fair.
So we should tolerate the deaths some of us prefer and act vigorously against the deaths some of us dislike?
Brilliant, Einstein!
Actually, Americans would not be here today had we had no arms in 1776, just as Americans would not be where we are today had we had no cars.
It’s an authentic dilemma, Al!
We should all ride bicycles and take mass transit.
A little Zorro Madman dictatorship there, eh?
Where are the Founders when you need them?
They would NEVER have allowed Madman in to become a citizen.
Yup, in gun-free zones like at Virginia Tech.
Do your personal feelings trump the Constitution? Are your personal feelings the law of the land? This is the airhead way leftists argue.
IT IS YOUR DUTY, MEN!
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“But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”
– Declaration of Independence, 1776
“…courts…must…declare all acts contrary to the manifest tenor of the Constitution void.”
“…men…do…what their powers do not authorize, [and] what [their powers] forbid.”
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“[A] limited Constitution … can be preserved in practice no other way than through the medium of courts of justice, whose duty it must be to declare all acts contrary to the manifest tenor of the Constitution void. Without this, all the reservations of particular rights or privileges would amount to nothing … To deny this would be to affirm … that men acting by virtue of powers may do not only what their powers do not authorize, but what they forbid.”
– Alexander Hamilton
As long as the fed government have states outgunned then all is in order.
#. Zero infringement. What if a state beefs up its NG, state of the art weaponry?
“What if a state beefs up its NG, state of the art weaponry?”
And when a Marxist Democrat POTUS does a Title 10 call-up of that more potent Guard to turn it against its own state?
The armed forces swear allegiance to the Constitution, not to POTUS. A Marxist Democrat POTUS would not be able to get the military to go along with an order in defiance of the Constitution. The same limitation on power is currently besetting Putin — he can’t get young guys to fight his war anymore. The same with the IRGC…passive resistance. Meanwhile the PLA is plotting how to dump Xi JinPing so they don’t get ordered to make war on Taiwan/USA/Japan.
Lincoln illegally started an unconstitutional war over unprohibited and fully constitutional secession, and the treasonous soldiers under him, obeying his illicit orders, were evidently not supporting or adhering to the Constitution.
Once the South declared themselves a nation it became legal for Lincoln to attack a foreign power.
Today it’s different. If it walks and talks like a duck…
It was never licit or constitutional for Lincoln to commence a war against a sovereign foreign nation that had committed no act of war against the U.S., and Lincoln was obliged by law to remove his military forces from that sovereign foreign nation. Every action Lincoln took was unconstitutional, beginning with his denial of secession and subsequent to that act.
“Once the South declared themselves a nation it became legal for Lincoln to attack a foreign power.”
A legal and Constitutional war on the CSA as a foreign power would have required Lincoln to obtain a formal Declaration of War by Congress. That never happened.
“The armed forces swear allegiance to the Constitution”
Virtually every politician in the US swears allegiance to the Constitution before taking office. How is that working out for you? Do you think that the typical National Guard member is likely to defy any order that comes down the official chain of command in a declared emergency? Guard members are conditioned to follow orders according to that established CoC, and after a Title 10 declaration, POTUS is at its top. Those declarations happen often enough after natural disasters that standard Guard operations reflect it. Your confidence in Guard members (and their unit commanders) to think and react as individuals under extremely stressful conditions is impressive. I wish I could say that I share that confidence and optimism, but I do not. YMMV.
😂 Then individuals should have the same. Just be certain you aren’t one of the baddies.
Correcting the liberal record:
(1) Liberals aren’t really that interested in reducing gun homicides. If they were, their inner cities wouldn’t be shooting galleries. And Australia already has a very low gun-homicide rate, and yet Australian liberals are constantly trying to pass more restrictive legislation against gun ownership. This sadly is true in every anglophone country.
Liberals hate guns and gun owners as a personal preference and always want to ram their preferences down everyone else’s throats. That’s true of more than just guns, too.
(2) Eliminating AR-style long guns isn’t really about gun safety; it’s a political strategy. Long guns of all types constitute but a small fraction of gun homicides. Eliminating ARs eliminates the most popular long gun so that AR enthusiasts will lose interest in protecting gun rights in general. Then liberals can more easily chip away at other gun categories. It’s divide and conquer.
(3) It follows that liberals don’t support gun control. They really support gun abolition.
(4) If liberals take your guns, they won’t protect you. They’ll blame you. They already do.
43,000 highway deaths per year.
BAN CARS!
Actually, I think liberals are already working on that 😉
No voter ID. Yes biological males in women’s competitive sports, locker rooms, and showers.. No border. Defund the police. Abolish prisons.
These are the positions of a lunatic, yet they are adopted by one major political party in the US.
700,000 people die in hospitals each year.
BAN HOSPITALS !!!!
The singular American failure is the judicial branch, with emphasis on the Supreme Court.
Even a judge or justice can read English with comprehension, presumably.
“Shall Not Be Infringed!”
America doesn’t need to fix guns; America needs to fix judges, justices, and the entire judicial branch.
We have a unending rash of mass shootings — allowing it to continue unaddressed betrays a cold-hearted mentality of “I, me, mine”. Most Americans want mass shootings to be curtailed/reduced, but while keeping govt. from ever wresting control over weapons. We could do this if we put on our problem-solving cap, but many no longer can muster the needed constructive conflict.
Most Americans, the majority poor, want every last cent of other people’s money too.
That’s why the Founders/Framers structured the Constitution the way they did, which is the way it exists right now, comrade.
Mash shootings are a vanishingly small percentage of all shootings. The majority of shootings are in blue metros, which constitute a very small number of counties. The number of gun crimes was declining until Soros prosecutors entered the picture. I would bet that since Trump has been back in office, gun crimes are declining, again.
Somebody tell Sam Alito that communism is unconstitutional starting with the absolute 5th Amendment right to private property, which is absolutely not public property and over which only the owner may “claim and exercise” dominion.
The right to private property is unqualified, with the sole exception of the “takings clause,” and therefore absolute in the 5th Amendment in every aspect and facet and to every degree.
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“[Private property is] that dominion which one man claims and exercises over the external things of the world, in exclusion of every other individual.”
– James Madison
Sam,
Stories about you are legend. There’s an outlaw in town.
“that the covered firearms materially thus differed from machine guns and military-grade weaponry, which the Supreme Court instructed can be banned under the Second Amendment.”
When did the Supreme Court “instruct” this?
The holding in Miller was that only weapons that contributed to the efficacy of the militia had their ownership protected. So a sawed-off shotgun could be taxed.