USA Today ran a largely solid preview of the two cases that will decide whether AR-15-style rifles are protected by the Second Amendment: Grant v. Higgins, out of the Second Circuit, and Viramontes v. Cook County, out of the Seventh Circuit. Maureen Groppe’s July 26 piece, “What the Supreme Court’s test for gun rules could mean for AR-15s this year,” gets the essential stakes right. But it makes two claims the record does not fully support, and both are worth correcting.
Bruen Reaffirmed Heller. It Did Not Replace It.
USA Today writes:
“Modern gun rules, the Supreme Court said in a landmark 2022 decision, can’t stray too far from historical weapons regulations to pass constitutional muster.”
That overstates New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, 597 U.S. 1 (2022), as a standalone landmark. Bruen applied the identical interpretative methodology the Supreme Court had already announced in District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008): start with the plain text of “the right of the people to keep and bear arms,” then shift the burden to the government to identify a historical tradition of regulation that justifies the modern restriction. Bruen’s real contribution was clarifying that framework for lower courts that, in the fourteen years between the two decisions, had drifted into freelance interest-balancing the text never authorized. Bruen did not create new law. It reaffirmed Heller and made the framework harder for lower courts to evade.
The Rahimi Spin That Never Panned Out
USA Today’s second stumble concerns United States v. Rahimi, 602 U.S. 680 (2024), which upheld disarming a person subject to a domestic violence restraining order after a judicial finding that he posed a credible threat. The article states:
“While the Supreme Court appeared to pull back from that controversial test just two years later, two Second Amendment decisions the conservative court handed down in June show it’s firmly in place — which could have implications for the coming showdown over semi-automatic rifles.”
That framing echoes a talking point I answered directly when Rahimi came down. As I wrote in Much Ado About Nothing: Rahimi Reinforces Bruen and Heller in the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy:
“Many antagonists of the Second Amendment have begun the spin cycle on Rahimi, casting the decision as a radical departure or an ‘important first step away’ from Bruen and calling it the Court’s ‘mad dash away from [Justice Thomas’s] extremist position on the Second Amendment.’ Governmental litigants defending draconian firearms regulations have already made submissions to the lower courts that Rahimi ‘bolsters all of the State’s arguments.’ That is not only outlandish but flatly false.”
Rahimi stands for a narrow proposition: a court finding that someone is a violent danger to himself or others can support temporary disarmament. There is ample historical precedent for disarming people found to be physically, violent dangerous. Nothing about that holding weakened the text-and-history framework.
Hemani and Wolford Confirm the Test Held
USA Today itself now supplies the proof. Quoting Adam Winkler, the UCLA law professor and author of Gunfight: The Battle Over the Right to Bear Arms in America:
“It looked like the court was going to accept relatively loose analogies in applying the Second Amendment to current gun laws. But that doesn’t seem to be the case anymore.”
Professor Winkler’s ultimate conclusion is correct in the the Supreme Court has not loosened up the standards for deciding 2A cases in favor of government, and the two June 2026 rulings prove it. In United States v. Hemani, No. 24-1234 (U.S. June 18, 2026), the Court ruled 9-0, in an opinion by Justice Gorsuch, that the federal ban on gun possession by “unlawful users” of a controlled substance cannot be applied wholesale to a habitual marijuana user. And in Wolford v. Lopez, No. 24-1046 (U.S. June 25, 2026), the Court struck down Hawaii’s default rule requiring express property-owner consent before carrying on private property open to the public — the so-called “vampire rule.” Both rulings confirm the Bruen test never went anywhere.
The Founders’ Drinking Habits and the Fourth Disqualifier
USA Today’s account of Hemani also flags Justice Gorsuch’s discussion of Founding-era drinking. “Had habitual drunkard laws applied to those who simply drank regularly, many notable early Americans could have faced trouble,” Gorsuch wrote, citing John Adams, George Washington, James Madison, and Thomas Jefferson. Duke Law’s Joseph Blocher told USA Today: “It would be weird if the federal law prohibiting gun possession by habitual users of controlled substances were to become constitutional if it turned out that James Madison drank only half a pint of whisky instead of a full pint.” The approach, he added, “feels to me like it’s asking an awful lot of history — more in some cases, really, than it can bear.”
I addressed this exact problem in a separate Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy essay, “The Third Rails of Second Amendment Jurisprudence.” As I wrote there:
“The fourth disqualifier protects firearm-related activities that were common at the Founding. Thus, if a purported principle, if applied historically at the Founding, would have banned or restricted a common activity of that era, the principle must be rejected…. Any historical principle that would transform the leading members of the Founding generation into criminals cannot be correct.”
Justice Gorsuch’s opinion tracks that principle precisely: a rule that would have made the Founders criminals or to have otherwise disarmed them cannot be the correct constitutional rule today.
What Comes Next for AR-15 Semi-Automatic Rifles
The Supreme Court granted certiorari on June 30, 2026, in both Grant v. Higgins, No. 25-566, challenging Connecticut’s assault-weapon ban after the Second Circuit upheld it in August 2025, and Viramontes v. Cook County, No. 25-238, challenging the Cook County, Illinois ban. The cases are consolidated for one hour of oral argument this fall, with a decision expected by the end of the Term in June 2027. Applying Heller and Bruen faithfully, as Hemani and Wolford just demonstrated the Court will do, semi-automatic rifles in common use for lawful purposes should be protected. The only real question left is the margin of victory for Team 2A.
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.