The Court has agreed to hear two major constitutional challenges involving bans on commonly owned semiautomatic rifles:
Viramontes v. County of Cook, No. 25-238, challenges Cook County, Illinois’s ban on AR-15 platform rifles and similar semiautomatic firearms.
National Association for Gun Rights v. Lamont, No. 25-421, challenges Connecticut’s ban on AR-15-style rifles and magazines holding more than ten rounds.
These are not cases about machine guns. They are not cases about military weapons smuggled from an armory. They concern ordinary semiautomatic firearms owned by millions of law-abiding Americans for lawful purposes.
The constitutional collision has finally arrived.
In New York State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n, Inc. v. Bruen, 597 U.S. 1 (2022), the Supreme Court demolished the interest-balancing test that lower courts had used for years to rescue constitutionally defective gun laws. The government may no longer defend a firearm restriction simply by chanting “public safety,” presenting frightening statistics, and insisting that surrendering a constitutional right is merely “common sense.”
Under Bruen, once the Second Amendment’s plain text covers an individual’s conduct, the government must prove that its restriction is consistent with this nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation. Political slogans are not historical evidence. Emotional appeals are not constitutional analysis. Legislative arrogance is not a substitute for the Bill of Rights.
The Second Amendment does not say that the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed unless a governor becomes nervous, a legislature invents a frightening label, or a judge decides the Constitution is politically inconvenient.
It says:
“The right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
That language is not ambiguous. It is not a suggestion. It is not a privilege dispensed by politicians to citizens they consider sufficiently obedient. It is a command directed at the government.
For generations, politicians have attempted to escape that command by manipulating language. Semiautomatic rifles became “assault weapons.” Ordinary magazines became “high-capacity magazines.” Confiscation became “gun safety.” Every new infringement arrived gift-wrapped in the same tired promise that one more restriction would finally stop violent crime.
When that promise failed, the politicians never surrendered the law. They demanded another one.
After Bruen, officials in several gun-control states did not accept the Supreme Court’s ruling. They began constructing end runs, workarounds, sensitive-place expansions, licensing mazes, feature bans, magazine restrictions, fees, delays, and criminal penalties designed to preserve the same infringements under different names.
They behaved as if a Supreme Court decision were merely an irritating memorandum they could file in a drawer.
Lower-court judges repeatedly helped them. Some treated Bruen as an obstacle to be explained away rather than binding constitutional law. Meanwhile, otherwise law-abiding citizens remained exposed to arrest, prosecution, financial ruin, and imprisonment for possessing firearms that millions of Americans lawfully own elsewhere.
The National Firearms Act of 1934 and the Gun Control Act of 1968 represent the foundation of the modern federal gun-control regime. Their defenders call them regulation. Their opponents properly recognize them as monuments to a government that decided constitutional rights could be taxed, registered, rationed, and criminalized.
Now the Supreme Court must answer the question the lower courts have evaded: Can the government ban rifles that are commonly possessed by law-abiding Americans merely because politicians dislike their appearance, features, or popularity?
The constitutional answer is no.
The Court also has an opportunity to confront magazine bans. A firearm without a functional ammunition-feeding device is little more than an expensive club. Government cannot evade the Second Amendment by pretending that an essential operating component somehow exists outside the protected right.
I expect a broad ruling, likely by a 6-3 vote, holding that commonly owned semiautomatic rifles cannot be banned merely by branding them “assault weapons.” I also expect the Court to reinforce Bruen and deliver an unmistakable warning to politicians and lower-court judges: constitutional commands are not invitations for creative evasion.
If the Court faithfully applies District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008), and New York State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n, Inc. v. Bruen, 597 U.S. 1 (2022), these bans are finished. A ruling against Cook County and Connecticut should threaten similar prohibitions throughout the country, including California’s.
The Court commonly releases its most consequential decisions near the end of its term. That places the likely decision in June 2027, although the Court could issue it earlier.
For decades, gun-control politicians have pretended that “shall not be infringed” means “may be infringed whenever we manufacture enough fear.”
Their constitutional reckoning is coming.
And this time, changing the label on the infringement will not save it.
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