At City Journal, Ilya Shapiro gives a preview of the Second Amendment cases coming up at the Supreme Court. He writes:
The Court will also return to the Second Amendment in consolidated challenges to bans on AR-15s and similar semiautomatic rifles, Viramontes v. Cook County and Grant v. Higgins. Cook County (Chicago) and Connecticut prohibit possession of rifles with specified features that are commonly grouped under the political label “assault weapons.” The Seventh Circuit held that AR-15s fall outside the Second Amendment’s text, while the Second Circuit deemed them “unusually dangerous weapons” that may be banned consistent with historical tradition.
Those conclusions are difficult to square with District of Columbia v. Heller and New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen. Heller protects firearms “in common use” for lawful purposes and permits bans on weapons that are both dangerous and unusual. AR-15-style rifles are certainly dangerous—as are all firearms—but they’re among the most popular rifles in America and therefore can’t plausibly be called unusual.
The Court has spent years sending Second Amendment cases back to lower courts with increasingly exasperated instructions to apply its precedents faithfully. This time, it appears ready to answer a key question directly: Does the Constitution protect the right to possess America’s most versatile type of rifle?
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