The Supreme Court has granted certiorari in Viramontes v. Cook County, Illinois, No. 25-238, and consolidated it with Grant v. Higgins, No. 25-566, teeing up the most consequential Second Amendment question the Court has taken since New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen: whether the Second and Fourteenth Amendments protect the right to own an AR-15 and the semiautomatic rifles like it. I have argued for more than a year that this case was coming and that we will win it. That prediction now has case numbers and a firm timetable attached to it — one hour of consolidated oral argument in the October Term 2026, with a decision likely in June 2027.
The Cases the Court Will Decide
Viramontes challenges Cook County’s ordinance banning semiautomatic “assault weapons,” a category that sweeps in the AR-15 platform along with a long list of other rifles defined by cosmetic features rather than function. The Seventh Circuit rejected the challenge below, bound by its own 2023 precedent, Bevis v. City of Naperville, 85 F.4th 1175 (7th Cir. 2023), in which Judges Diane Wood and Frank Easterbrook upheld Illinois’s parallel state ban; Judge Michael Brennan dissented, writing that the majority’s reading of the word “Arms” was too cramped. Grant v. Higgins challenges Connecticut’s 2013 post-Sandy Hook assault weapons ban, upheld by the Second Circuit in August 2025 on the theory that the Second Amendment right is “not unlimited” and does not reach “unusually dangerous weapons.” Both petitioners share counsel — the law firm of Cooper & Kirk PLLC — and the Second Amendment Foundation and the Firearms Policy Coalition are the lead plaintiff organizations in both cases: joined by two private citizens in Viramontes, and by the Connecticut Citizens Defense League and three private citizens in Grant. The consolidated question presented is direct: does the Second Amendment protect AR-15-platform rifles and the semiautomatic firearms materially identical to them.
Justice Kavanaugh Already Told Us This Was Coming
I have told my audience for more than a year that Justice Brett Kavanaugh all but announced this cert grant himself. In his statement respecting the denial of certiorari in Snope v. Brown, 605 U.S. ___ (2025) — the Fourth Circuit case challenging Maryland’s AR-15 ban, from which Justices Thomas, Alito, and Gorsuch would have granted review — Kavanaugh wrote that “this Court should and presumably will address the AR-15 issue soon, in the next Term or two,” previewing the analytical problem that dooms these bans:
“Under this Court’s Second Amendment precedents, moreover, it can be analytically difficult to distinguish the AR-15s at issue here from the handguns at issue in Heller. AR-15s are semi-automatic, but so too are most handguns.”
— Justice Brett Kavanaugh, statement respecting denial of certiorari, Snope v. Brown
That echoes the position Kavanaugh took as a circuit judge in his dissent in Heller v. District of Columbia (“Heller II”), 670 F.3d 1244 (D.C. Cir. 2011), where he argued that the semiautomatic rifles the District banned were indistinguishable, as a matter of text and history, from the semiautomatic handguns Heller protects. When Kavanaugh signals this plainly, the Court tends to follow through — he made a similar prediction about public carry, and roughly a year later the Court decided Bruen. I expect Justice Kavanaugh to write this majority opinion too, vindicating the dissent he wrote fifteen years ago.
Why the Text Wins This Case
The analysis is not complicated. The Second Amendment protects “Arms,” and an arm is any instrument that can be used offensively or defensively — a category that does not shrink to exclude instruments invented after 1791. District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008), already held that semiautomatic handguns, the most common firearms in America, are protected Arms that cannot be banned. There is no constitutional basis for treating a semiautomatic rifle differently because of its stock or barrel length. I expect the opinion, or a concurrence, to note that handguns account for far more firearm deaths annually than rifles of any kind — a fact that undercuts the entire public-safety rationale for banning the most popular rifle in America.
The Magazine and Suppressor Cases Wait Their Turn
The same order list showed what the Court is not yet doing. National Association for Gun Rights v. Lamont, No. 25-421 — a separate Connecticut case naming Governor Ned Lamont and challenging the state’s ban on magazines holding more than ten rounds — was held, not granted, and now carries to the Court’s late-September long conference. Duncan v. Bonta, No. 25-198, challenging California’s magazine ban after roughly nineteen relists, was held over in the same batch, as was Gator’s Custom Guns, Inc. v. Washington, No. 25-153, challenging Washington’s magazine restriction. I read this as deliberate sequencing: the Court will resolve the AR-15 question first, and the reasoning in Viramontes and Grant will supply the framework for the magazine and suppressor fights that follow.
A Term That Already Delivered
This grant caps a term already favorable to the Second Amendment. On June 25, the Court decided Wolford v. Lopez, 609 U.S. ___ (2026), striking down Hawaii’s default rule barring concealed carry on private property open to the public, 6-3, Justice Alito writing for the majority. On June 18, a unanimous Court in United States v. Hemani, No. 24-1234, held that 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(3) cannot strip gun rights from a habitual drug user without individualized proof of contemporaneous intoxication or dangerousness — a 9-0 judgment, with Justice Gorsuch writing the principal opinion and Justice Alito, joined by Justice Kagan, concurring only in the judgment. And on this same order list, the Court denied certiorari in five cases challenging age restrictions on handgun purchases by 18-to-20-year-olds, with Justice Thomas noting he would have granted review in West Virginia Citizens Defense League v. ATF. Every piece of this term points the same direction, and I expect the AR-15 question to be decided exactly as the text, Heller and Second Amendment all require.
This article is based on analysis by Professor Mark W. Smith, constitutional attorney and Host of the Four Boxes Diner 2nd Amendment channel. Watch the original video here. This does not constitute legal advice.