The Supreme Court said it will hear a Second Amendment challenge to Connecticut and Cook County, Illinois bans on most semiautomatic assault weapons, a decision that could reshape gun laws across Democratic-led states, including California’s long-standing rest
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court announced Tuesday that it will take up a Second Amendment challenge to gun laws in Connecticut and Cook County, Illinois, laws that ban most semiautomatic assault weapons.
The justices said they will hear the case in the fall. Their order landed just before the court’s summer recess, as the new term begins to take shape and the fight over what states can restrict under “keep and bear arms” moves toward another high-stakes verdict.
The dispute is widely viewed as a major test of how far states and the federal government can go in limiting firearms and ammunition. And it carries immediate consequences for California and other Democratic-led states that tightly regulate or prohibit semiautomatic rifles, including the AR-15.
Gun-rights advocates argue that these weapons are among the most common and popular in the country and that they cannot be banned in some states without violating the Constitution. Connecticut state attorneys. defending the restrictions. said only about 2% of Americans own assault weapons. and that they rarely get used for self-defense.
California’s experience sits at the center of the broader debate. Since 1989, California has prohibited the sale and possession of most semiautomatic rifles and pistols that can fire more than 10 shots before reloading. Nine other states led by Democrats have similar laws.
State lawmakers have described the guns as unnecessary for self-defense but capable of mass murder. If the court’s conservatives rule for the gun-rights challengers next year, the bans could be struck down for states that adopted similar limits.
The legal fight turns on a familiar dispute over language and intent: gun-rights advocates say firearms in “common use” by law-abiding owners cannot be prohibited by the government.
Four of the court’s conservatives have previously signaled skepticism toward state assault-weapon restrictions in dissents. Those justices are Clarence Thomas, Samuel A. Alito, Neil M. Gorsuch, and Brett M. Kavanaugh. The pattern, in practice, points to a key question about the votes of Chief Justice John G. Roberts and Justice Amy Coney Barrett.
The challenge has also drawn support from state attorneys representing Montana, Idaho, and 25 other Republican-led states. They urged the court to stop what they called liberal judges and Democratic-led states from “rewriting the 2nd Amendment … to allow hostile jurisdictions to continue infringing on their citizens’ core constitutional right to keep and bear arms.”.
The Court’s case schedule arrives after years of shifting outcomes in lower courts. In 2016, California voters approved a ballot measure making possession of large-capacity magazines illegal. At least 10 states have similar rules, but those laws generally apply only to the manufacture and sale of large-capacity magazines.
Gun-rights advocates sued in San Diego, setting off nearly a decade of back-and-forth litigation. A federal judge struck down the restrictions under the Second Amendment, but the state appealed. The law was eventually upheld by the 9th Circuit Court in an en banc ruling.
In Chicago. the 7th Circuit Court upheld an Illinois law and a Cook County ordinance that prohibit semiautomatic rifles and pistols. Its opinion said rapid-fire guns do not differ significantly “from machine guns and military-grade weaponry. ” weapons that. it said. can be banned under the Second Amendment.
Before Tuesday, the Supreme Court had repeatedly declined to weigh in on whether the Second Amendment’s right to “keep and bear arms” includes the right to semiautomatic “assault weapons” and large-capacity magazines.
Since 2015, the justices have turned down gun-rights appeals from blue states like Illinois and Maryland over their bans on “assault weapons,” despite dissents from Thomas, Alito, and Gorsuch.
Those questions have been simmering for years inside the court itself. Three years after Roberts became chief justice. the Supreme Court ruled for the first time in 2008 that the Second Amendment protects individual gun rights rather than only rights connected to state militias. The 5-4 decision struck down a city’s ban on having a handgun at home for self-defense.
In District of Columbia vs. Heller. Justice Antonin Scalia wrote that the Constitution gives law-abiding persons a right to have weapons in “common use” for self-defense. but not “dangerous and unusual weapons.” Since then. gun-rights and gun-control advocates have argued over whether semiautomatic guns with large-capacity magazines can be regulated because they are uniquely dangerous. or whether they are protected because they are very common.
The court’s recent record has been uneven. Last year. the justices. in a 6-3 decision. struck down a federal regulation that banned “bump stocks. ” devices that allow rapid-fire shooting with a semiautomatic rifle. That regulation was adopted in the first Trump administration after the mass shooting at an outdoor concert in Las Vegas where a lone gunman fired as many as 1. 000 shots from a hotel window. The conservative majority said bump stock devices did not fit the definition of a prohibited machine gun.
Earlier this year, however, the Supreme Court upheld a regulation prohibiting unregistered “ghost guns” made by parts kits in a 7-2 decision.
Kavanaugh’s own background on the assault-weapon issue adds to the internal stakes. As an appeals court judge in Washington, D.C., Kavanaugh voted to strike down the city’s ban on assault weapons.
With the Supreme Court now set to take up the Connecticut and Cook County case in the fall. the question of how the Second Amendment applies to semiautomatic assault weapons and their place in modern gun ownership is set to land at the center of next year’s likely showdown over what’s allowed and what is not.
Supreme Court Second Amendment assault weapons Connecticut gun law Cook County Illinois semiautomatic rifles AR-15 California gun ban large-capacity magazines bump stocks ghost guns