On August 28, 2026, the petitioners in Viramontes v. Cook County and Grant v. Higgins filed their opening merits brief with the United States Supreme Court. These consolidated cases, granted certiorari on June 30, 2026, and set for one hour of oral argument together, are the vehicle the Court has chosen to decide whether the Second and Fourteenth Amendments protect the right to possess the AR-15 platform and other semiautomatic rifles. This is not a preview and not a lower-court skirmish. It is the case, and the document that landed at the Court runs roughly seventy pages. I have read it, and I say this without hedging: it is one of the most powerful briefs I have seen filed in defense of the right to keep and bear arms.
What a Merits Brief Actually Is
Cert-stage briefing asks the Court to take a case at all. A merits brief is different. Once certiorari is granted, the petitioner gets the first word on the actual legal question the Court will decide, and that filing becomes the document the Justices and their clerks work from as they prepare for argument. It is not advocacy aimed at persuading four Justices to grant review; it is the argument aimed at persuading five to win. Everything downstream, the government’s response, the reply, the amicus briefs, the questions at argument, will be argued against the structure this brief lays down. That is why the filing itself is news, independent of anything it says. The case is now formally joined at the only stage that produces a binding national judgment.
The Team Behind the Filing
David H. Thompson of Cooper & Kirk, PLLC is counsel of record, joined on the brief by his colleagues Peter A. Patterson, William V. Bergstrom, and J. Joel Alicea. Cooper & Kirk is the firm that has carried the modern Second Amendment litigation project through the appellate courts for a decade, and having its name on the cover here signals how seriously the petitioners are treating this filing.
The petitioners themselves are institutional as well as individual. In Viramontes v. Cook County, No. 25-238, out of the Seventh Circuit, the named plaintiffs are joined by the Firearms Policy Coalition and the Second Amendment Foundation. In Grant v. Higgins, No. 25-566, out of the Second Circuit, the plaintiffs are joined by the Connecticut Citizens Defense League and, again, the Second Amendment Foundation. Two different circuits, two different state bans, one consolidated brief, one shared theory of the case.
The Question Presented, Exactly as Printed
The Court’s grant frames the issue in a single sentence:
“Whether the Second and Fourteenth Amendments guarantee the right to possess AR-15 platform and similar semiautomatic rifles.”
Notice what that sentence does and does not say. It is anchored to the AR-15 platform specifically, with “similar semiautomatic rifles” extending outward from it, rather than posing the question as semiautomatic rifles as a general class. The Fourteenth Amendment appears alongside the Second because the Bill of Rights, ratified in 1791 and originally binding only on the federal government, was extended to bind the states through the Fourteenth Amendment, ratified in 1868 after the Civil War. Cook County’s ordinance and Connecticut’s statute are state and local enactments, so the petitioners have to invoke both amendments to reach them.
How the Brief Is Built
The brief follows the two-step framework the Court itself set out in District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008), and made explicit as text-then-history in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, 597 U.S. 1 (2022). Step one asks whether the regulated item falls within the Second Amendment’s plain text as an “arm.” Step two asks whether the government can show a historical tradition justifying its ban, which under Heller means showing the arm is both dangerous and unusual. Once the plain text is implicated, that second burden belongs to the government, not the citizen.
I say this not as a spectator. The brief cites an article I published in Per Curiam, the online companion to the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, in September 2023, for the proposition that Heller’s in-common-use test already accounts for arguments that new technology or new social problems justify a different, more permissive analysis. Lower courts have used that “nuance” argument for years to avoid applying Heller as written. Seeing that argument dismantled in a brief now before the Supreme Court, in the very language I used against it, is a moment I will not pretend to be neutral about.
The Calendar Now Running
The respondents’ brief is due October 21, 2026. No argument date has been set on the Court’s docket as of this writing. I have my own estimate, based on the Court’s typical spacing between merits briefing and argument, that we will see oral argument in the first days of December, with a decision by the end of the Court’s term in June 2027. That is my forecast, not a scheduled fact, and I want to be honest about the difference. What is a fact is that the case is now fully joined on the merits, with a brief on file that gives the Court every tool it needs to say what it should already know: commonly owned rifles cannot be banned.
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.