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 Cook County.
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. The state says the guns are a preferred weapon of mass shooters, and they can be banned because they are similar to military-grade weapons.
“These laws are critical public safety measures, and they are consistent with the Second Amendment,” said Janet Carter, managing director of Second Amendment litigation at the gun-control group Everytown Law.
Gun rights groups, on the other hand, argue it’s unconstitutional to ban semiautomatic rifles, which are legally owned by millions of Americans.
“The Second Amendment protects arms in common use for lawful purposes, and it’s hard to argue that a type of rifle that potentially outnumbers Ford F-150 trucks in America doesn’t meet that standard,” said Adam Kraut, executive director of the Second Amendment Foundation.
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. Lower courts have upheld both laws.
“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 Cook County, on the other hand, say the measure does pass constitutional muster. “The trauma that assault weapon massacres have inflicted on the public at large has been staggering,” they wrote.
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.
The 7th Circuit Court of Appeals declined to overturn Cook County’s assault weapons ban in June 2025, but two gun rights groups appealed to the Supreme Court, setting up the case announced Tuesday.
Illinois also has an assault weapons ban on the books statewide, signed into law in January 2023.
The high court in July 2024 declined to hear an appeal of the 7th Circuit’s decision not to issue preliminary injunctions on the state and local assault weapons bans. And in June 2025, the court also declined to hear appeals involving Maryland’s assault weapons ban as well as Rhode Island’s ban on large-capacity magazines.
In denying to hear the Maryland and Rhode Island appeals, however, Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote in a statement that he felt the issue of assault weapons was not yet ripe for review, but that the court probably would address it “in the next Term or two.”
He also specifically cited the Cook County case that the court officially agreed to consider this week.
Story by Lindsay Whitehurst. Capitol News Illinois contributed.
