For the past several months, the Supreme Court has repeatedly considered in its conference meetings a pair of gun control cases that deal with blue state bans on so-called "assault weapons" like AR-15 semiautomatic rifles and "high capacity" ammunition magazines that hold more than 10 rounds.

On Monday, however, a majority of the justices declined to take up either of those two critical cases, leaving tens of millions of gun owners and Second Amendment supporters deeply disappointed and even angry, according to Fox News.

Sharing in that disappointment was conservative Justice Clarence Thomas, who authored a furious dissent against the denials, as well as Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who concurred with the current rejections but offered some hope that the "AR-15 issue" will finally and necessarily be addressed by the court in a different case within the next year or two.

Supreme Court turns down two gun control cases

SCOTUSblog reported that the Supreme Court on Monday, after delaying a decision for the past 15 consecutive conference meetings, finally formally declined to take up two cases involving an "assault weapons" ban in Maryland and a "high capacity" magazine ban in Rhode Island.

The first of those is Snope v. Brown, which asked the justices to consider "Whether the Constitution permits the state of Maryland to ban semiautomatic rifles that are in common use for lawful purposes, including the most popular rifle in America."

The second case is Ocean State Tactical v. Rhode Island, and its ask was two-fold -- "(1) Whether a retrospective and confiscatory ban on the possession of ammunition-feeding devices that are in common use violates the Second Amendment; and (2) whether a law dispossessing citizens without compensation of property that they lawfully acquired and long possessed without incident violates the takings clause of the Fifth Amendment."

In both instances, district courts had ruled in favor of the gun control laws, and those rulings were upheld by liberal-leaning appellate courts, largely on the ludicrous leftist anti-gun arguments that semiautomatic rifles like AR-15s and standard capacity magazines that hold more than 10 rounds weren't considered "arms" that are protected by the Second Amendment.

Thomas outraged over mistreatment of Second Amendment rights

In Monday's Order List, the Supreme Court's majority did not explain why it had declined to grant certiorari in the Snope or Ocean State Tactical cases. However, it did note that Justices Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Neil Gorsuch would have granted cert in both.

In a scathing dissent to the Snope denial, Thomas excoriated the "surprising conclusion" of the lower courts that AR-15-style semiautomatic rifles were not protected "arms" under the Second Amendment, and picked apart the absurd reasoning used by the district and circuit courts to reach that decision.

Citing various prior high court precedents -- including Heller, Bruen, and Caetano, among others -- Thomas asserted that the tens of millions of AR-15-style rifles currently in circulation proved that they were "arms" that were in "common use" by the general public and could not be banned as "dangerous and unusual" weapons.

"I would not wait to decide whether the government can ban the most popular rifle in America. That question is of critical importance to tens of millions of law-abiding AR–15 owners throughout the country. We have avoided deciding it for a full decade," Thomas wrote. "And, further percolation is of little value when lower courts in the jurisdictions that ban AR–15s appear bent on distorting this Court’s Second Amendment precedents."

"Until we resolve whether the Second Amendment forecloses that possibility, law-abiding AR–15 owners must rely on the goodwill of a federal agency to retain their means of self-defense. That is 'no constitutional guarantee at all,'" Thomas concluded. "I respectfully dissent."

Kavanaugh predicts "AR-15 issue" will be addressed soon

Separately, Justice Kavanaugh issued a statement on the Snope denial and wrote, "Given that millions of Americans own AR–15s and that a significant majority of the States allow possession of those rifles, petitioners have a strong argument that AR–15s are in 'common use' by law-abiding citizens and therefore are protected by the Second Amendment under Heller."

"In short, under this Court’s precedents, the Fourth Circuit’s decision is questionable. Although the Court today denies certiorari, a denial of certiorari does not mean that the Court agrees with a lower-court decision or that the issue is not worthy of review," he noted. "The AR–15 issue was recently decided by the First Circuit and is currently being considered by several other Courts of Appeals."

"Opinions from other Courts of Appeals should assist this Court’s ultimate decisionmaking on the AR-15 issue," Kavanaugh added. "Additional petitions for certiorari will likely be before this Court shortly and, in my view, this Court should and presumably will address the AR-15 issue soon, in the next Term or two."