Today, the Supreme Court announced their rejection of a major 2nd Amendment challenge to California’s strict limits on carrying concealed guns in public.

The justices have rejected an appeal of the case of Peruta vs. California, which would have delivered an enormous boost to Californians right to carry firearms, specifically concealed carry, in public.

Chris W. Cox, executive director of the National Rifle Association Institute for Legislative Action, released the following statement in response to the United States Supreme Court’s denial of the petition in this case:

“We are disappointed in the Court’s rejection of the appeal in Peruta v. California, which now leaves millions of law-abiding Californians with no ability to bear arms outside the home.  As Justices Thomas and Gorsuch correctly stated, too many courts have been treating the Second Amendment as a second-class right.  That should not be allowed to stand.  As the Supreme Court stated in its landmark decision in Heller v. District of Columbia, the Second Amendment guarantees an individual right to keep and bear arms for self-defense.  The framers of our Constitution did not intend to limit that right to the home.  We look forward to a future Court affirming that the right to keep and bear arms is as much a part of our Constitution as the other enumerated rights that it protects. We will not stop fighting until a future Court affirms this fundamental right.”

Two Supreme court judges stood in dissent against the SCOTUS decision. Trump appointee Justice Neil M. Gorsuch joined Justice Clarence Thomas in opposition to the decision, with Thomas expressing the decision “reflects a distressing trend” in the treatment of “the Second Amendment as a disfavored right” in America today.

In his dissent, Thomas wrote: “the Framers made a clear choice: They reserved to all Americans the right to bear arms for self-defense. I do not think we should stand by idly while a State denies its citizens that right, particularly when their very lives may depend on it.” Adding, “even if other Members of the Court do not agree that the Second Amendment likely protects a right to public carry, the time has come for the Court to answer this important question definitively.”