2A war in the homeland : U.S. Supreme Court to hear challenges against bans on owning ‘assault weapons’
The court has agreed to consider whether Americans have a constitutional right to own the popular weapons that have repeatedly been used in mass killings
The U.S. Supreme Court agreed to consider
whether Americans have a constitutional right to own so-called assault rifles,
the popular weapons that have repeatedly been used in mass killings.
The justices said they will hear
contentions that Cook County, Illinois, is violating the Constitution’s Second
Amendment by banning a class of semiautomatic weapons that include the AR-15.
The court will also hear a similar case over a ban enacted in Connecticut in
the aftermath of the 2012 massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown,
Connecticut.
The clash could produce a major expansion
of gun rights. Eleven states and the District of Columbia prohibit what they
call assault weapons, according to Giffords Law Center, an interest group that
supports firearm restrictions. Fourteen states and the District of Columbia
outlaw high-capacity magazines. The court will hear the new dispute in the
nine-month term that starts in October.
Gun-rights advocates are trying to extend
the 2022 Supreme Court decision that declared a constitutional right to carry a
firearm in public and established a tough new test for assessing restrictions.
The court’s conservative majority said defenders of gun laws must be able to
show a historical tradition of similar regulations.
Cook County, which includes Chicago, has
had a ban since 1993. The current version outlaws more than 100 rifles by name,
with criminal penalties of as much as six months imprisonment.
The county said it enacted the ban in the
face of “overwhelming, mounting, and unrefuted evidence showing that assault
rifles are the weapon of choice for criminals and terrorists set on quickly
massacring innocents.”
The county is being sued by two gun-rights
groups and two residents who say they want to acquire semiautomatic rifles.
They called the AR-15 an “iconic American firearm” that has become the most
popular rifle in the country.
“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 other than the handguns this court held protected in Heller,”
they argued, referring to the 2008 Supreme Court decision that enshrined
a constitutional right to own a handgun for self-defence purposes.
Lower courts have largely upheld
assault-weapons bans, including the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in the
Cook County case and the 2nd Circuit in the Connecticut case.
Supporters of the laws include Everytown
for Gun Safety, an advocacy group founded and backed by Michael Bloomberg,
founder and majority owner of Bloomberg News parent company Bloomberg LP.
Some of the court’s conservatives
previously indicated they were eager to review an assault-weapons ban. When the
court turned away two challenges last year, Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel
Alito and Neil Gorsuch all said they would have taken up the issue.
Another conservative, Justice Brett
Kavanaugh, declined to provide the needed fourth vote to take up that case but
he said the challengers had a “strong argument” that the ban was
unconstitutional. Kavanaugh said the Supreme Court should take up the issue
after more lower courts had weighed in.
The dynamic suggests that two other
Republican appointees — Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Amy Coney
Barrett — will likely cast the key votes. As is its custom, the court didn’t
say which justices voted to take up the new cases.
During their current term, the justices
expanded the Second Amendment by ruling that the government can’t categorically
bar marijuana users from possessing firearms. The court also struck down a
Hawaii law that barred people from bringing firearms to stores and other
private property without the owner’s express permission.
The new cases are Viramontes v. Cook
County, 25-238, and Grant v. Higgins, 25-566.\
https://nationalpost.com/news/world/us-supreme-court-assault-weapon-bans
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