By Andrew Chung
WASHINGTON, June 30 (Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court agreed on Tuesday to hear a challenge to the legality of state restrictions on assault-style rifles, giving the justices another chance to expand gun rights in a case that involves a type of weapon often associated with mass shootings.
The justices took up two appeals after lower courts upheld bans in Cook County, Illinois, and Connecticut on powerful semiautomatic rifles such as AR-15s. The lower courts rejected arguments that the measures violate the U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment right to “keep and bear arms.”
The Supreme Court is expected to hear the case in its next term, which begins in October. The court separately on Tuesday rejected a series of appeals challenging federal and state bans on handgun purchases by people ages 18 to 20.
In a nation bitterly divided over how to address firearms violence including numerous mass shootings, the Supreme Court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, often has taken an expansive view of the Second Amendment.
Challengers to the restrictions on assault-style rifles have said that Supreme Court precedents concerning the Second Amendment protect these firearms, which they described as in “common use.”
The Second Amendment Foundation gun rights group, one of the challengers, welcomed the court’s willingness to take up the matter.
“The Supreme Court’s decision to hear these pivotal cases will finally provide the courts the necessary guidance as it relates to the types of arms protected by the Second Amendment,” Second Amendment Foundation Executive Director Adam Kraut said in a statement. “The modern semiautomatic rifles banned in Cook County, Connecticut and elsewhere are among the most commonly owned firearms in the country, placing them well within the scope of the Second Amendment.”
The Supreme Court broadened gun rights in landmark rulings in 2008 and 2010 as well as in a 2022 case that made it harder to defend gun restrictions under the Second Amendment, requiring such measures to be “consistent with the nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.”
COOK COUNTY POLICY
Cook County, which includes the city of Chicago, first enacted an assault-style weapons ordinance in 1993. The current law bans many similar semiautomatic rifles, including the AR-15 and AK-47.
Cook County said it has long been known that assault-style rifles are the preferred tool for mass shooters. They are “the weapon of choice for criminals and terrorists set on quickly massacring innocents,” county lawyers said, citing numerous examples in court papers of their use, including the attempted assassination of Donald Trump during a presidential campaign rally in 2024.
“The AR-15 also has the same destructive capacity as weapons developed for use in wartime offensives by the military,” county lawyers said, noting assault-style rifles are far more lethal than handguns.
The challengers, the Firearms Policy Coalition and Second Amendment Foundation gun rights groups and two of their members who seek to own assault-style rifles, sued Cook County officials in federal court in 2021.
The plaintiffs describe the AR-15 as a “perfectly ordinary and common” rifle. They say the term “assault weapon” is a political slogan designed to exploit public misunderstanding about the difference between semiautomatic and fully automatic firearms.
The Chicago-based 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals sided with the county in 2025, rejecting the bid by the plaintiffs to overrule a 2023 ruling by the same court that upheld a similar Illinois statewide ban on assault-style weapons.
CONNECTICUT POLICY
Connecticut in 2013 enacted its ban on assault-style rifles such as the semiautomatic AR-15 and AK-47, as well as large-capacity magazines, after a shooter used such a weapon in the 2012 mass killing of 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. The state further tightened its restrictions on assault-style weapons in 2023.
The Second Amendment Foundation and Connecticut Citizens Defense League gun rights groups as well as several residents seeking to own certain banned weapons such as AR-15 platform firearms sued in federal court in 2022.
The Manhattan-based 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals last year sided with the state.
“The challenged Connecticut laws, which impose targeted restrictions on unusually dangerous weapons while preserving numerous legal alternatives for self-defense and other lawful purposes, are consistent with our nation’s historical tradition of regulation of such weapons,” the 2nd Circuit said.
The Supreme Court expanded Second Amendment rights in two rulings during its current term.
On June 26, the court struck down a Hawaii law restricting the carrying of handguns on private property open to the public, like most businesses, without the owner’s permission. On June 18, it limited the application of a decades-old federal law that bars firearms possession by certain drug users, narrowing a measure that had threatened the gun rights of millions of Americans who use marijuana and own firearms.
(Reporting by Andrew Chung; Additional reporting by Nate Raymond; Editing by Will Dunham)
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