On September 4, 2026, the Solicitor General of the United States filed a brief in the Supreme Court asking the Justices to strike down two of the nation’s most prominent AR-15 bans. The brief, filed as amicus curiae in support of the petitioners in the consolidated cases of Cutberto Viramontes, et al. v. Cook County, Illinois, No. 25-238, and Eddie Grant, Jr., et al. v. Higgins, No. 25-566, tells the Court that Connecticut’s statewide semiautomatic-rifle ban and Cook County’s parallel ordinance violate the Second Amendment. The Court has now set oral argument for December 2, 2026.
The Weight of the Government’s Word
I have spent years explaining that a Second Amendment win at the Supreme Court comes down to five votes, and that no filing moves those votes like one from the Solicitor General’s office. That office has represented the United States before the Court since the nineteenth century, and the Justices most often described as occupying the Court’s center — Chief Justice John Roberts, Justice Brett Kavanaugh, and, to a real degree, Justice Amy Coney Barrett — have long treated the Solicitor General’s factual representations as unusually reliable. The government does not always win, and the Court does not always adopt the Solicitor General’s legal conclusions. But when that office lays out a history of a weapon, or of the nation’s regulatory tradition, largely uncontested by the opposing party, the Court has good reason to treat that record as settled. That is the real significance of September 4: not simply that the executive branch agrees with AR-15 owners, but that the institutional voice with the most credibility in that building has now told the Court, in writing, that AR-15s are constitutionally protected arms.
What the Brief Told the Court
The brief, signed by Solicitor General D. John Sauer and Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon of the Civil Rights Division, among others, follows the framework this Court has already adopted. “An arms regulation complies with the Second Amendment only if the government can show that the regulation is consistent with the principles that underpin our regulatory tradition,” it argues, and that tradition “precludes banning arms that are in common use among law-abiding citizens for traditionally lawful purposes.” The brief traces that common-use test through District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008), NYSRPA v. Bruen, 597 U.S. 1 (2022), and United States v. Miller, 307 U.S. 174 (1939), and applies it without hedging: “The AR-15 rifle is unquestionably in common use among law-abiding citizens for lawful purposes.” AR-15s, the brief notes, are lawful at the federal level and in forty states, and citing Smith & Wesson Brands, Inc. v. Estados Unidos Mexicanos, 605 U.S. 280 (2025), it calls the AR-15 “the most popular rifle in the country.”
The brief also recounts the rifle’s actual history — developed in 1956 by ArmaLite, the company from which “AR” derives; produced generically by other manufacturers once the original patent expired in 1977; and, citing Garland v. Cargill, 602 U.S. 406 (2024), operating as a semiautomatic firearm that “fires only one shot each time the shooter pulls the trigger.” That plain history displaces decades of “assault weapon” rhetoric with a documented factual record. Then-Judge Kavanaugh anticipated much of this reasoning in 2011, dissenting from the D.C. Circuit’s decision upholding the District’s rifle registration and ban scheme in Heller v. District of Columbia, 670 F.3d 1244, 1287-88 (D.C. Cir. 2011). The Solicitor General’s brief invokes that dissent for the proposition that Americans own AR-15s for “self-defense in the home, hunting, target shooting, and competitions.” I have argued for more than a year that then-Judge Kavanaugh’s dissent reads like a blueprint for this litigation, and the government’s brief now leans on it directly.
The Outlier-State Argument
The brief’s second move addresses the small number of jurisdictions that ban AR-15s outright. “Courts applying the common use test may properly consider whether the arms at issue have traditionally been banned or heavily regulated,” the government argues — and the inverse holds equally true, that “the long-standing and widespread legality of a class of arms usually suggests that law-abiding citizens can and do possess such arms for lawful purposes.” That reasoning traces to Heller’s treatment of the District’s handgun ban and to this Court’s recent decision in Wolford v. Lopez, 146 S. Ct. 2032 (2026), which struck down Hawaii’s default rule against concealed carry on private property open to the public as an outlier unsupported by historical tradition. Connecticut and Cook County, the brief argues, sit in that same narrow minority — a fact the government treats as evidence against the bans, not a justification for them.
What Comes Next
Petitioners, represented by David H. Thompson of Cooper & Kirk, filed their merits brief on August 28, 2026. Respondents’ brief is due October 21, 2026, and the Court will hear argument on December 2, 2026. I expect the Court to side with AR-15 owners; the remaining questions are how many Justices join the majority and how broadly the opinion reaches. The Solicitor General’s brief does not resolve those questions. It does remove any doubt about where the United States government now stands, and in an institution where credibility is currency, that is not a small thing.
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.