27 States Tell Supreme Court AR-15 Bans Violate the Second Amendment
Tennessee, Kansas, and 25 other states say Illinois and Connecticut cannot ban rifles owned by tens of millions of Americans for lawful purposes.
Twenty-seven states are urging the U.S. Supreme Court to strike down Illinois’ and Connecticut’s bans on AR-15s and similar semiautomatic rifles, arguing that lawmakers cannot decide Americans have no “need” for one of the country’s most popular firearms.
The September 4, 2026, amicus brief was filed in support of the gun-owner petitioners in Viramontes v. Cook County, No. 25-238, and Grant v. Higgins, No. 25-556. The Court agreed in June to hear the two consolidated challenges, putting the constitutional status of commonly owned semiautomatic rifles directly before the justices.
Tennessee and Kansas lead the coalition, joined by Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, West Virginia, and Wyoming.
Their argument is straightforward: The Second Amendment protects firearms commonly possessed for lawful purposes.
AR-15s and comparable semiautomatic rifles easily meet that standard because tens of millions are in civilian hands, their owners overwhelmingly possess them lawfully, and rifles appear far less frequently in violent-crime data than handguns and several non-firearm weapon categories.
The states identify the underlying constitutional problem immediately. Lower courts have allowed legislatures and judges to substitute their own opinions about acceptable firearms for the Second Amendment’s actual text.
“The result? A fundamental right that is subject to legislative caprice and judicial speculation about what the right-holder really ‘needs.’”
That is not how constitutional rights work. Government does not get to ban a protected arm merely because politicians believe another firearm should be good enough.
A Constitutional Right Cannot Depend on Geography
The states warn that allowing Illinois and Connecticut to prohibit commonly owned rifles would leave the scope of the Second Amendment dependent on where an American lives.
“Decisions that narrow the scope of the Second Amendment—and affirm the outright ban of the AR-15 platform and similar semiautomatic rifles—leave constitutional rights dependent on geography and invite States (and the federal government) to enforce restrictions on the Second Amendment that this Court’s precedents do not permit.”
The coalition recognizes that states ordinarily have broad authority to address policy questions within their borders. Federalism, however, does not authorize a state to erase an enumerated constitutional right.
Quoting District of Columbia v. Heller, the states emphasize that “the enshrinement of constitutional rights necessarily takes certain policy choices off the table,” including “a wholesale ban on semiautomatic rifles in common use for lawful purposes.”
This is a different argument from the militia-arms amicus brief AmmoLand previously examined. That filing emphasized the AR-15’s suitability for militia service but undercut its originalist reasoning by conceding that automatic firearms fall outside the Second Amendment.
The states take a cleaner route based on common ownership, lawful use, defensive utility, American history, and comparatively rare criminal misuse.
AR-15s Are Unquestionably in Common Use
The coalition builds its argument on the Supreme Court’s established common-use doctrine. Under Heller, the Second Amendment protects weapons “typically possessed by law-abiding citizens for lawful purposes.” Bruen reaffirmed that weapons in common use cannot be treated as “dangerous and unusual.” AR-15s plainly meet that standard.
The brief cites estimates showing that more than 32 million modern sporting rifles have been manufactured in or imported into the United States since 1990. Other cited research places between 24 million and 28 million AR-15s and comparable rifles in circulation. Depending on the survey, between 16 million and 24.6 million Americans own or have owned an AR-15 or similarly styled rifle.
The Supreme Court itself unanimously recognized in 2025 that “the AR-15 is the most popular rifle in the country” and is “widely legal and bought by many ordinary consumers.”
The states’ conclusion is appropriately direct:
“Against that backdrop, it is ‘beyond debate’ that AR-15s and similar rifles meet the requisite ‘common use’ threshold.”
The brief adds:
“Any conclusion to the contrary blinks reality.”
These are not rare, exotic, or unusual weapons. They are ordinary semiautomatic rifles found in gun safes, hunting camps, competition bays, patrol vehicles, farms, and homes across America.
The brief also cuts through one of the gun-control movement’s favorite deceptions. Although an AR-15 may resemble an M16 externally, it lacks the M16’s defining capability of automatic fire. The filing notes that the similarities reflect ergonomic and design features that are useful in both military and civilian firearms.
It further explains in a footnote that “AR” refers to the original ArmaLite brand. It does not mean “assault rifle.”
The Evidence of Common Ownership Is Growing
The states’ brief relies in part on William English’s 2021 National Firearms Survey, updated in 2022. The evidence subsequently presented to the Court is even stronger.
As AmmoLand recently reported, English’s 2026 National Firearms Survey estimates that approximately 26.4 million American adults own a combined 60 million AR-15-type and similarly styled semiautomatic rifles. That total includes approximately 40 million AR-15-type rifles and 20 million comparable semiautomatic rifles.
That newer research was cited in the petitioners’ Supreme Court brief, not the September 4 states’ filing. Together, however, the filings present the justices with a growing body of evidence showing that AR-15s are unquestionably common.
Calling tens of millions of rifles “unusual” does not make them so.
Americans Own AR-15s for Lawful Purposes
Millions of Americans use AR-platform rifles for target shooting, competition, hunting, predator control, and defense of themselves and their families.
The states cite a 2022 Washington Post-Ipsos survey in which 91% of responding AR-15 owners said protection of themselves, their families, or their property was a reason they owned the rifle. Sixty-five percent identified protection as a major reason.
English’s earlier National Firearms Survey similarly found that 61.9% of respondents who owned an AR-15 or comparable rifle cited home defense.
The brief connects that modern ownership to America’s longstanding tradition of keeping rifles for protection. Colonists carried rifles defensively. The rifle became the “companion of the pioneer.” Free-Soilers relied on rifles for protection during the violent struggle over slavery in Kansas, while armed Americans later used them when government refused to protect them during the Jim Crow era.
That history matters. The rifle did not suddenly become a defensive arm when Colt began selling semiautomatic AR-15s to civilians. Americans have kept rifles to defend their homes, families, communities, and liberty since before the Second Amendment was ratified.
Defensive Rifle Use Is Not Theoretical
The states provide several modern examples of people using rifles to defend themselves and others.
A pregnant Florida woman used her family’s AR-15 against an armed and masked home invader, protecting her husband and daughter. An Illinois gun owner used an AR-15 to interrupt an ongoing stabbing attack without firing. An Oklahoma homeowner used an AR-15 against three armed home invaders.
The brief also recounts how a Rochester student drove away armed intruders by displaying an unloaded AR-15.
“In many instances, simply brandishing the rifle is enough to scare away a home invader.”
That point is routinely lost in gun-control statistics. Defensive gun uses do not always end with shots fired, an attacker killed, or a police report categorizing the incident as a defensive shooting. Often, the presence of an armed citizen ends the threat.
Why Americans Choose Rifles for Defense
The states explain why Americans rationally select semiautomatic rifles for protection: mild recoil, accuracy, ergonomics, controllability, and effectiveness.
The filing cites a Justice Department report stating that 94.5% of local police departments authorized semiautomatic rifles for on-duty officers.
Officials with the Lawrence, Kansas, Police Department explained the reason:
“Patrol rifles are a necessity in today’s environment where disaster can be averted or minimized when quick action with the right equipment is taken.”
Those practical advantages do not disappear when the person holding the rifle is a homeowner rather than a police officer. A firearm that is accurate, controllable, and effective in the hands of government agents does not become constitutionally unworthy when selected by an ordinary American protecting his family.
FBI Data Undercut the Case for AR-15 Bans
The states also use FBI data to confront the claim that rifles are uniquely responsible for violent crime.
For the FBI’s one-year figures cited in the brief, rifles of every action type were identified in 378 homicides. By comparison, handguns were identified in 3,817 homicides, knives or cutting instruments in 1,229, and “personal weapons”—hands, fists, feet, or teeth—in 506.
The difference becomes even more pronounced across the cited 10-year figures:
- 3,809 homicides involved rifles.
- 43,342 involved handguns.
- 10,787 involved knives or cutting instruments.
- 5,439 involved personal weapons.
The same pattern appears in the states defending their bans. Over the cited 10-year period, the FBI recorded 4,440 Illinois murders involving handguns and 130 involving rifles. Connecticut recorded 178 handgun murders and six rifle murders.
The states acknowledge that the FBI separately reports crimes in which the firearm type is unidentified. They also do not claim that rifles are never criminally misused. Their point is that comparatively rare criminal misuse cannot justify banning firearms overwhelmingly possessed by peaceable Americans.
“The evidence of relatively limited criminal misuse of rifles of all kinds does, however, bolster the conclusion that AR-15 platform and similar rifles are in common use for overwhelmingly lawful purposes—and therefore cannot be banned outright.”
Heller rejected the argument that handgun violence permitted Washington, D.C., to ban handguns. The states argue that the same rule must apply with even greater force to rifles, which appear far less frequently in violent-crime data.
“If handguns are nevertheless protected from wholesale prohibition, so too are the most popular semiautomatic rifles in common use for lawful purposes.”
The Third Circuit Already Rejected an AR-15 Ban
The states repeatedly cite the en banc Third Circuit’s recent decision striking down New Jersey’s semiautomatic-rifle and magazine bans.
That court began with a proposition that should never have been controversial: Semiautomatic rifles are firearms, and firearms are “Arms” under the Second Amendment. The constitutional right therefore presumptively protects their possession, leaving the government with the burden of producing a valid historical justification for its ban.
The Third Circuit concluded that New Jersey failed.
Illinois and Connecticut want the Supreme Court to tolerate the opposite result, allowing their bans to stand despite the same constitutional text and the same absence of any historical tradition supporting a categorical prohibition on commonly owned rifles.
That disagreement among federal appellate courts is another reason the Supreme Court must settle the issue nationally.
Banning Today’s Rifle Is Like Banning the Musket in 1789
The coalition’s strongest originalist argument is also its simplest. There is no historical tradition of prohibiting an ordinary firearm widely possessed by Americans for lawful purposes.
“Respondents’ bans are the equivalent of banning the musket in 1789—the very firearm the American colonists in the colonial militias brought with them to battle during the American Revolutionary War.”
The states continue:
“It would be absurd to suggest that the First Congress and the States that ratified the Second Amendment thought that the fundamental right to keep and bear arms would permit the banning of common muskets. It didn’t—and it likewise does not permit the categorical prohibition of modern firearms in common use for lawful purposes.”
The Second Amendment does not protect only firearms technologically frozen in the 18th century. It protects the people’s right to keep and bear arms, including modern firearms commonly selected for lawful purposes.
Illinois and Connecticut do not get to transform America’s rifle into a prohibited weapon by attaching a politically manufactured label to it. Nor may courts decide that millions of Americans would be adequately protected with something else.
The outcome will reach far beyond those two jurisdictions. Virginia’s pending AR-15-ban lawsuits have already been paused while courts and litigants wait for the Supreme Court to decide Viramontes and Grant. Other state rifle bans will inevitably face the rule the justices announce.
The AR-15 is common. Its lawful purposes are undeniable. Its criminal misuse is comparatively rare. Under the Second Amendment’s text, American history, and the Supreme Court’s own precedents, that should end the inquiry.
The 27 states ask the Court to reverse. It should.
About Duncan Johnson:
Duncan Johnson is a lifelong firearms enthusiast and unwavering defender of the Second Amendment—where “shall not be infringed” means exactly what it says. A graduate of George Mason University, he enjoys competing in local USPSA and multi-gun competitions whenever he’s not covering the latest in gun rights and firearm policy. Duncan is a regular contributor and editor-in-chief for AmmoLand News and is responsible for AmmoLand’s daily gun-rights reporting and industry coverage.