A split Supreme Court declined on Monday to hear a challenge to a state ban on assault weapons, semiautomatic rifles that are popular among gun owners and that have also been used in multiple mass shootings. Justices Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch said they would have taken the case, and Justice Clarence Thomas wrote separately to say the law likely runs afoul of the Second Amendment. “That question is of critical importance to tens of millions of law-abiding AR–15 owners throughout the country.”