WASHINGTON (AP) — A Supreme Court that has expanded gun rights will consider whether bans on semiautomatic rifles, often called assault weapons, violate the Second Amendment.
The justices said Tuesday they will hear appeals challenging bans on the AR-15 and similar semiautomatic firearms in Connecticut and the Chicago area.
Similar laws are in place in about a dozen states, covering major cities like New York, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. Congress allowed a national assault weapons ban to expire in 2004, but Democrats have supported renewing it in response to a series of mass shootings. States have also continued to pass their own laws, including recent measures in Virginia and Rhode Island.
It is the latest high-profile dispute over guns to reach the court since its conservative majority handed down a landmark ruling in 2022 that expanded Second Amendment rights and spawned challenges to firearm laws around the country.
Arguments are expected to be heard in the fall.
The Connecticut law was passed after a mass shooter used an AR-15 to kill 26 children and educators at Sandy Hook Elementary in 2012. Attorneys for the states say the guns are a preferred weapon of mass shooters that can be banned under the Constitution because they are similar to military-grade weapons.
“Historical tradition allows states to respond to and prevent emerging and unprecedented societal harms by banning the weapons causing them,” they wrote. Lower courts have upheld the measure.
But gun rights groups argue it’s a violation of the Second Amendment to ban semiautomatic rifles, which are legally owned by millions of Americans.
“Rifles and magazines are ‘bearable arms’ and are therefore manifestly ‘Arms’ covered by the plain text of the Constitution,” attorneys for the National Association for Gun Rights wrote.
Four conservative justices on the nine-member court, enough to grant review of a case, had signaled that it was only a matter of time before the court took up the issue.
The ban in Cook County, Illinois, was first passed in 1993.
“If the Second Amendment does not protect the most popular rifles in the country, it is hard to see how it protects any firearms at all,” aside from handguns kept in the home, the challengers wrote.
Attorneys for the county say "the trauma that assault weapon massacres have inflicted on the public at large has been staggering,” and the measure does pass constitutional muster.
The Supreme Court backed Second Amendment rights in two cases this term, striking down gun carry restrictions in Hawaii and a broad federal ban on gun ownership by marijuana users. They've previously upheld some restrictions, including a law barring people under domestic-violence restraining orders from having guns.
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