From The Federalist:

The Supreme Court has refused to hear “assault weapon” cases in the past. However, previous cases were lower profile and the result of narrow readings, not the backwards interpretation exhibited in Kolbe. In its bravado, the Fourth Circuit may have crossed a bridge too far, sparking national debate and possibly forcing the issue to finally make it to the Supreme Court.

The Kolbe court justified their holding through a misplaced reliance on Heller’s discussion of weapons not protected by the Second Amendment: “dangerous and unusual weapons” and those “most useful in military service – M-16 rifles and the like.” This reliance was completely out of context, most obviously because the M-16 and its stablemates are machine guns, not in common lawful use by civilians anywhere. This is a far cry from the pedestrian semi-automatic weapons Maryland actually targeted.