Supreme Court Won't Hear Challenge to GA Law Banning Guns in Churches

Previous appeals court decisions say right to restrict guns on private property trumps right to bear arms on private property

The U.S. Supreme Court declined Monday to take up a challenge to a Georgia law that prohibits guns in places of worship.

That leaves in place a decision last summer by the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejecting a claim by the gun rights group GeorgiaCarry.org that worshippers had the constitutional right to arm themselves for their own protection while they are in a church, synagogue or a mosque. The federal appeals court last summer also turned away a Second Amendment claim, writing that an individual right to carry a gun into a place of worship does not trump a private property owner's right to "exclusively control who is allowed on the premises and under what circumstances."