Rep. Andrew Clyde and more than 60 House Republicans have filed an amicus brief urging the Supreme Court to rule that state and local bans on AR-15-style semiautomatic rifles violate the Second Amendment as the justices prepare to hear consolidated challenges involving Connecticut and Cook County, Illinois.
By yourNEWS Media Newsroom
More than 60 House Republicans are urging the Supreme Court to strike down bans on AR-15-style semiautomatic rifles, arguing that firearms owned by millions of Americans fall squarely within the protections of the Second Amendment.
Rep. Andrew Clyde, R-Ga., is leading the lawmakers in an amicus brief filed in Grant v. Higgins, a case asking the justices to determine whether restrictions on AR-15s violate the Second and 14th amendments.
The Supreme Court has consolidated the dispute with Viramontes v. Cook County, which challenges a similar prohibition in Illinois.
Clyde said the lower courts erred by allowing the restrictions to stand and predicted that the Supreme Court would find the bans unconstitutional.
“Much to gun-grabbing Democrats’ dismay, the Second Amendment is abundantly clear,” Clyde said. “‘Shall not be infringed’ is not a suggestion, regardless of the firearm in question.
“Semi-automatic rifles, including AR-15s, are owned by millions of law-abiding Americans, as it is well within our constitutional rights to do so,” Clyde added.
“As an unapologetic voice in the fight to protect and restore our Second Amendment liberties, I’m proud to lead this amicus effort, and I’m confident the Supreme Court will declare these bans … what they are: blatantly unconstitutional,” he continued.
More than 60 Republican House members have joined the filing along with the American Center for Law and Justice, according to Breitbart.
The congressional brief argues that AR-15s satisfy the Supreme Court’s established test protecting weapons that are in common use for lawful purposes.
It also contends that semiautomatic rifles have a direct connection to the historical citizen-militia tradition underlying the Second Amendment.
“The [Second Amendment] protects, at minimum, arms that are in common use for lawful purposes and that bear a reasonable relationship to the citizen-militia tradition the clause celebrates. Military small arms that meet the common-use test, of which the AR-15 is a quintessential example, must therefore sit near the heart of the right, not outside it,” the brief concludes.
To support that argument, the lawmakers cite two previous Supreme Court decisions as well as historical materials including the Federalist Papers, the Militia Act of 1792, the Militia Act of 1903 and the Virginia Declaration of Rights drafted by George Mason.
The filing also draws from the writings of English jurist William Blackstone and the text of the Second Amendment itself.
The cases before the Supreme Court stem from firearms restrictions enacted in Connecticut and Cook County, Illinois.
Both jurisdictions prohibit certain semiautomatic rifles, including AR-15-style firearms, under laws that survived challenges in the lower federal courts.
Those lower-court decisions left the prohibitions intact, prompting the challengers to ask the Supreme Court to intervene.
The consolidated cases now give the justices an opportunity to address more directly whether governments may prohibit possession of AR-15-style rifles despite their widespread civilian ownership.
The dispute follows a series of major Supreme Court decisions defining the reach of the Second Amendment, including rulings recognizing an individual right to possess firearms and requiring modern gun restrictions to be evaluated against the nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.
Clyde and the lawmakers joining his brief argue that those precedents leave little constitutional room for categorical bans on firearms that are commonly possessed by law-abiding citizens.
The Supreme Court’s eventual ruling could therefore have consequences extending beyond Connecticut and Cook County, potentially determining the constitutional viability of similar semiautomatic-rifle bans elsewhere in the country.
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