SCOTUS Takes the AR-15 Fight
Consolidated Illinois and Connecticut Cases Put the Right to Own America’s Most Popular Rifle Before the High Court
The Supreme Court has put the AR-15 fight squarely on its December docket.
The justices will hear consolidated challenges to semiautomatic-rifle bans on Dec. 2 in Viramontes v. Cook County and Grant v. Higgins, according to the Court’s official argument calendar.
The dispute reaches the Court after lower federal courts upheld Cook County, Illinois’s ban and Connecticut’s similar law against Second Amendment challenges. The Court granted review June 30, consolidated the cases, and allotted one hour for oral argument, the Viramontes docket shows.
The constitutional question could not be more direct.
“Whether the Second and Fourteenth Amendments guarantee the right to possess AR-15 platform and similar semiautomatic rifles.” — Supreme Court of the United States
Connecticut gun owners challenged that state’s ban in Grant, arguing that semiautomatic rifles in common lawful use—including the AR-15—fall within the constitutional guarantee. The Court’s official case record identifies the Second Circuit decision below; Viramontes comes from the Seventh Circuit.
SCOTUSblog reported both lower courts had sustained the bans before the justices took the cases.
For Americans who watched state and local governments move against America’s most popular rifle, Dec. 2 will bring the argument those governments could not avoid: whether the Constitution protects the arms they chose to ban.