Professor Robert Weisberg participates in a KQED panel on the future of legal challenges to assault weapons bans. 

The main parts of two of the nation’s strictest gun control laws in New York and Connecticut were upheld by a federal appeals court. Gun rights advocates want to take the cases to the Supreme Court.

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STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

Now, in this country, gun laws are facing a test. A federal appeals court upheld most, though not all, the provisions of gun laws in New York and Connecticut. The questions raised by that ruling may end up before the U.S. Supreme Court. NPR’s Hansi Lo Wang reports.

HANSI LO WANG, BYLINE: The two state laws ban certain assault-style semiautomatic weapons and large capacity magazines in New York and Connecticut. The laws were passed just months after the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School that killed 20 children and six adults in 2012.

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ROBERT WEISBERG: This was clearly a very, very carefully drafted law that was technically precise, detailed enough so that it couldn’t be called vague.

WANG: Robert Weisberg studies gun laws at the Stanford Criminal Justice Center, and he calls the New York and Connecticut laws models that other states could use.

WEISBERG: When you’ve got a major federal court saying this kind of law passes muster, then every drafter of legislation is going to look at this and see, let me see if I can document our justifications as well as New York and Connecticut did.