Supreme Court declines to hear a series of challenges to laws barring felons and drug users from having guns

CNN —

The Supreme Court said Tuesday that it won’t take up a challenge to parts of a federal law that bar convicted felons and drug users from possessing firearms, and let stand a ban on assault-style weapons in Illinois.

The decisions come days after the high court upheld a separate provision of the same federal disarmament law in the biggest Second Amendment case to reach the justices in two years. The court’s majority said a restriction on domestic abusers possessing firearms was constitutional because it was in line with a “tradition of firearm regulation” disarming dangerous individuals.

President Donald Trump talks with Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts as Associate Justice Elena Kagan looks on before the State of the Union address in the House chamber on February 4, 2020 in Washington, DC.

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Weeks after the Second Amendment featured prominently on the court’s docket, the decisions on Tuesday amounted to a collective ducking of the issue of guns when the court returns in the fall.

Among the cases the court declined to hear is one that could have unraveled Hunter Biden’s federal firearms conviction.

The court sent the challenges to the federal firearms bans back down to a lower court with instructions to review the case in light of their ruling last month in US v. Rahimi.

In that case, Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for an 8-1 majority, said that a 2022 ruling from the court that changed the framework federal courts must use when examining the nation’s gun laws did not necessarily lock lower courts into striking down any gun law that didn’t have a direct historic analogue.

Some court watchers had speculated that the