The Supreme Court this morning denied certiorari in two closely watched Second Amendment petitions on its April 20, 2026 orders list: Gardner v. Maryland, No. 25-5961, and Peterson v. United States, No. 25-1076. The denials leave in place a Maryland conviction of an interstate traveler who used her lawfully carried handgun in self-defense, and a Fifth Circuit decision upholding the National Firearms Act as applied to suppressors. Both outcomes are setbacks. But the timing — roughly five months before the Court’s next Term begins — suggests the Justices may be clearing lower-priority petitions in anticipation of granting review in pending AR-15, magazine, and young-adult cases.
Gardner v. Maryland: A Traveler’s Conviction Stands
Eva Marie Gardner is a Virginia resident with a valid Virginia concealed-carry permit. In 2021, she was driving through Maryland on Interstate 270 en route to her mother’s home in Pennsylvania when another driver struck her vehicle twice and approached on foot. Gardner displayed her handgun in self-defense. A Montgomery County, Maryland jury convicted her in 2022 of carrying and transporting a loaded handgun without a Maryland permit.
The constitutional anomaly is obvious. At the time of Gardner’s arrest and conviction, Maryland operated under the same discretionary “may-issue” permitting regime that New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, 597 U.S. 1 (2022), would shortly declare unconstitutional. Bruen itself named Maryland as one of a handful of outlier states whose permitting scheme violated the Second Amendment. Gardner could not have obtained a Maryland permit before the incident — the state was not issuing them to applicants in her position — yet her conviction under that now-condemned regime remains on the books.
The cert petition, supported by amicus briefs from the NRA, the Cato Institute, the Second Amendment Foundation, and a group of U.S. Senators led by Sen. Ted Cruz, asked the Court to address the right to travel interstate with a lawfully carried firearm. The absence of a formal circuit split on that precise question may help explain the denial. Yet the historical record is clear: Founding-era traditions often accommodated travelers carrying arms precisely because travel carried heightened risk. The Court’s refusal to hear the case leaves that question for another day — and leaves Gardner’s conviction undisturbed.
Peterson v. United States: Suppressors Remain NFA-Regulated
In Peterson, federal agents investigating George Peterson’s home-based firearms business in Louisiana discovered an unregistered suppressor in a bedroom-closet safe. Peterson entered a conditional guilty plea, preserving his Second Amendment challenge. The Fifth Circuit, in an opinion authored by Chief Judge Jennifer Walker Elrod, rejected that challenge in a revised panel opinion issued August 27, 2025. The original February 2025 panel opinion had held suppressors were not “Arms” at all; the panel withdrew that opinion and reissued a revised one assuming arguendo that suppressors are protected arms.
The Fifth Circuit’s ultimate reasoning was that the NFA’s registration and transfer-tax scheme can be sustained as analogous to a “shall-issue” licensing law of the kind Bruen left undisturbed. That analytical move is difficult to defend. Registration is not licensing, and a national taxation regime imposed on a category of arms has no meaningful Founding-era analogue. The strongest contrary authority is then-Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s dissent in Heller v. District of Columbia (“Heller II”), 670 F.3d 1244 (D.C. Cir. 2011), which argued that firearm-registration requirements fail text-history-and-tradition analysis because most states historically have not required registration. Kavanaugh’s methodology was later adopted by the full Court in Bruen; his registration-specific reasoning was not, and today’s denial leaves that question open.
The Silver Lining: Is the Court Clearing the Docket?
The silver lining lies in what the Court may be preparing to grant. Justice Kavanaugh’s statement accompanying the denial of certiorari in Snope v. Brown (June 2, 2025) signaled that the Court “should and presumably will” address the constitutionality of AR-15 bans “in the next Term or two.” Several vehicles are already pending or imminent.
- Barnett v. Raoul — Seventh Circuit challenge to Illinois’ Protect Illinois Communities Act. Judge Stephen P. McGlynn of the Southern District of Illinois struck the AR-15 and magazine ban under Bruen; the Seventh Circuit heard argument September 22, 2025, before a panel including Judge Frank Easterbrook. The Department of Justice, under Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon, filed an amicus brief supporting the challengers — the first time the United States has ever argued against a state “assault weapons” ban.
- Association of New Jersey Rifle & Pistol Clubs v. Platkin (consolidated with Cheeseman v. Platkin) — Third Circuit en banc, argued October 15, 2025, addressing New Jersey’s AR-15 and large-capacity magazine bans. DOJ again filed an amicus brief supporting the challengers.
- Duncan v. Bonta, No. 25-198 — pending cert petition challenging California’s large-capacity magazine ban, following a Ninth Circuit en banc reversal of Judge Roger T. Benitez’s district-court ruling striking the ban.
- Gator’s Custom Guns, Inc. v. Washington, No. 25-153 — pending cert petition from a Washington Supreme Court decision upholding that state’s magazine ban.
- Young-adult petitions including NRA v. Glass, No. 24-1185 (Florida’s post-Parkland purchase ban, upheld by the Eleventh Circuit en banc), Paris v. Second Amendment Foundation, No. 24-1329 (Pennsylvania carry ban), McCoy v. ATF, and Picon v. United States — presenting a circuit split with the Third, Fifth, and Eighth Circuits siding with young adults and the Eleventh Circuit cutting the other way.
The Founding-era evidence on young adults is particularly strong. The Militia Act of 1792, enacted May 8, 1792 — fewer than five months after the Bill of Rights was ratified on December 15, 1791 — required every able-bodied male citizen between 18 and 45 to “provide himself” with a musket or rifle, ammunition, and accoutrements. The statute did not merely permit 18-, 19-, and 20-year-olds to possess arms; it obligated them to do so.
What to Watch
Three questions now shape the Second Amendment docket. First, will the Court grant cert in any of the magazine, AR-15, or young-adult petitions this spring, ahead of the Term that begins the first Monday of October 2026? Second, how will the Department of Justice handle Peterson going forward — the cert denial does not foreclose prosecutorial discretion or a post-conviction resolution reflecting the constitutional fragility of the Fifth Circuit’s reasoning? Third, and most fundamentally, today’s denials resolve nothing on the merits. The constitutional status of interstate travel with a lawfully carried firearm, and of the NFA as applied to suppressors, remains open for the next vehicle that reaches One First Street.
This article is based on analysis by Mark W. Smith on The Four Boxes Diner. Watch the original video. This does not constitute legal advice.