Gun-Control Groups Ask Supreme Court to Gut Bruen and Strip AR-15s of Second Amendment Protection
Gun-control groups defending AR-15 bans before the Supreme Court are asking justices to weaken Second Amendment protections, relying on historical Bowie knife restrictions, Reconstruction-era Winchester rifle regulations, and arguments that America’s most popular semiautomatic rifle falls outside the Constitution.
The gun-control lobby is showing its hand in the Supreme Court’s upcoming showdown over AR-15 bans. With the constitutionality of restrictions on America’s most popular semiautomatic rifle on the line, the organizations defending those bans are making it clear just how far they are willing to go to preserve them.
In an October 28 amicus brief, Giffords Law Center argues that the Supreme Court should overturn its landmark 2022 decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen if that precedent requires striking down bans on commonly owned semiautomatic rifles.
Virginia’s attorney general goes even further, telling the justices that AR-15s are not protected by the Second Amendment. Meanwhile, a group of historians is relying on 19th-century Bowie knife restrictions and questionable comparisons involving Winchester repeating rifles to defend modern bans on semiautomatic firearms.
These are not hypothetical arguments from your local anti-gun crackpot. They appear in documents submitted to the nation’s highest court in Viramontes v. Cook County, No. 25-238, and Grant v. Higgins, No. 25-566, two consolidated cases that could determine whether governments can continue banning rifles owned by millions of law-abiding Americans.
Giffords Wants Bruen Gone if It Means Protecting AR-15s
Perhaps the most revealing argument comes from Giffords Law Center, one of the country’s most prominent gun-control organizations. On page 18 of its brief, Giffords introduces an entire section with the heading:
“Striking Down the Challenged Laws Would Prove That Bruen Is Unworkable and Must Be Overruled.”
The organization first argues that the rifle bans can survive under Bruen. But if the justices disagree and conclude that the decision requires striking down those restrictions, Giffords offers another solution. On page 19, the organization writes:
“if Petitioners are right that this is the result Bruen commands, then Bruen is unworkable and must be overruled.”
Remember what Bruen established. The government cannot justify restrictions on the right to keep and bear arms simply by claiming that a law promotes public safety. Instead, it must demonstrate that the restriction is consistent with America’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.
That standard rejected the interest-balancing approach lower courts had repeatedly used to uphold gun-control laws despite their interference with an enumerated constitutional right.
Now Giffords is arguing that if the Supreme Court’s own Second Amendment test prevents lawmakers from banning commonly owned rifles, the Court should abandon that test.
The group’s brief also emphasizes the authority of state and local governments to address public-safety concerns. That argument reflects a familiar problem with gun-control advocacy: the suggestion that constitutional rights should depend on what elected officials believe their communities need.
The Second Amendment does not mean something different because someone crosses a county or state line. It protects an individual right against infringement by federal, state, and local governments.
Virginia Claims AR-15s Are Essentially Machine Guns
Virginia’s October 28 amicus brief takes a different, but equally troubling, approach. Rather than asking the Court to overturn Bruen, Virginia argues that the AR-15 does not qualify as a protected arm under the Second Amendment. The brief states on page 3:
“AR-15s are not ‘Arms’ that the Second Amendment protects.”
Virginia then advances an extraordinary comparison, describing AR-15s as machine guns except for their semiautomatic firing mechanism. That argument dismisses one of the most fundamental distinctions in firearms design.
A standard semiautomatic AR-15 fires one round for each pull of the trigger. A fully automatic machine gun can fire multiple rounds with a single sustained trigger pull. These are materially different operating systems, and federal firearms law recognizes that distinction.
Calling an AR-15 essentially a machine gun does not change how the rifle actually operates.
Virginia also argues that AR-15s are not commonly used for lawful self-defense, challenging the gun-owner surveys and ownership estimates cited by the petitioners.
But the Supreme Court’s decision in District of Columbia v. Heller recognized protection for arms typically possessed by law-abiding citizens for lawful purposes. Nothing in that principle requires Americans to have already fired their firearms in self-defense before their ownership receives constitutional protection.
Virginia’s position is particularly significant because the Commonwealth enacted its own restrictions on semiautomatic rifles in 2026, which have faced constitutional challenges and preliminary injunctions.
The state has an obvious interest in convincing the Supreme Court that governments can prohibit rifles commonly owned by their citizens.
Historians Turn to Bowie Knives and Winchester Rifles to Defend AR-15 Bans
Perhaps the most revealing historical arguments appear in a separate amicus brief submitted by historians, including David J. DeLay and other academics who have examined historical firearms regulations.
The historians argue that 19th-century restrictions on Bowie knives, along with selected regulations involving Winchester repeating rifles, establish a tradition of regulating weapons considered particularly dangerous.
Their discussion of Winchester rifles is particularly interesting.
Repeating rifles were a major technological advancement in the 19th century. The Henry rifle and subsequent Winchester designs allowed Americans to fire multiple rounds without reloading after every shot. Like today’s semiautomatic rifles, they represented a significant improvement over earlier firearms.
Yet the historians do not identify a broad American tradition of categorically prohibiting ordinary civilian possession of Winchester repeating rifles.
Instead, they rely on a handful of examples that deserve much closer examination.
One concerns an 1893 Florida law requiring a license for Winchester rifles. The National Rifle Association has challenged that law’s relevance, identifying its discriminatory history. The historians dispute that characterization and argue that concerns about murders involving Winchesters also contributed to its passage.
A late-19th-century licensing law, particularly one challenged as racially discriminatory, is a questionable foundation for justifying modern bans on commonly owned firearms.
The other examples are even more revealing.
The historians describe South Carolina’s efforts during Reconstruction to disarm Ku Klux Klan members who had obtained Winchester rifles. They also cite a subsequent South Carolina law requiring civilians to return Winchesters intended for state use. That is not the same thing as banning law-abiding citizens from purchasing and possessing their own repeating rifles.
Then there is Louisiana. The historians point to an 1870 order issued by Louisiana Adjutant General James Longstreet concerning Winchester rifles held in the New Orleans armory. The order restricted disassembling the rifles or using them for parades and drills without authorization.
In other words, the historians are citing military rules governing government-controlled firearms as historical evidence supporting restrictions on privately owned AR-15s.
The distinction should be obvious to anyone familiar with firearms or American history.
An order controlling how state-owned rifles are handled in an armory is not a prohibition on ordinary citizens possessing their own rifles. Neither is recovering government weapons from unauthorized hands.
Second Amendment Foundation attorney Kostas Moros, the organization’s director of legal research and education, has challenged the use of historical outliers to justify bans on common rifles. His broader legal scholarship argues that America’s historical tradition does not support prohibiting ordinary repeating firearms simply because they offered technological advantages over earlier weapons.
Starting the Giffords brief. It’s funny how they argue different states should be allowed to pass different things based on their needs.
If that’s true, why do they argue for a national AWB?
As usual, Giffords is intellectually dishonest, hiding what its true goal is to suit its audience. We have seen this time and time again from them, e.g.:
1. Opposing constitutional carry because shall issue exists, but being angry when blue states were forced to go shall issue;
2. Opposing our NFA win because NFA registration has, they claim, made it so that suppressors and SBRs are rarely used in crimes, but they still support states like California having total bans on suppressors.
Plenty more examples.
— Kostas Moros (@MorosKostas) October 28, 2026
The central question remains unanswered by these narrow examples: Where is the historical tradition of categorically banning an entire class of commonly owned repeating rifles from law-abiding citizens?
Pointing to Bowie knife taxes, restrictions on carrying particular weapons, and military armory rules does not establish such a tradition.
Another Attempt to Rewrite Bruen’s Constitutional Test
The effort to weaken Second Amendment protections does not stop with historical comparisons.
In another amicus brief, legal scholars Luke Smith Morgan and Jacob D. Charles ask the Supreme Court to conduct a more substantial historical examination at the first stage of the Bruen analysis.
Under Bruen, courts first consider whether the Second Amendment’s plain text covers the individual’s proposed conduct. If it does, the government must justify its restriction by demonstrating consistency with the nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.
Morgan and Charles argue that courts should examine the historically understood boundaries of the right when deciding whether the conduct falls within the Amendment’s protection in the first place.
The danger is that this approach could allow lower courts to exclude firearms from constitutional protection before requiring the government to justify its restrictions under Bruen’s historical-tradition test.
Gun owners have already watched lower courts find creative ways around Heller and Bruen. Giving those courts another opportunity to decide that an ordinary firearm falls outside the Second Amendment’s protection risks perpetuating that problem.
In a separate brief, law professor Joseph Blocher challenges the idea that the number of firearms in circulation should conclusively determine whether those firearms receive constitutional protection.
Blocher raises questions about how a strict common-use test would operate in other circumstances.
But the Supreme Court does not need to resolve every hypothetical firearms classification dispute to decide whether AR-15s are protected.
These rifles are already widely owned by law-abiding Americans for self-defense, recreation, competition, and other lawful purposes.
If the government can acknowledge that millions of Americans lawfully possess a firearm and still declare it outside the Second Amendment, what meaningful protection does the common-use principle provide?
States and Gun-Control Organizations Line Up Against AR-15 Owners
The October 28 deadline brought dozens of additional amicus submissions defending Cook County’s and Connecticut’s rifle restrictions.
The Supreme Court docket includes submissions from Giffords, Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, Sandy Hook Promise, law enforcement associations, medical organizations, legal scholars, local governments, and members of Congress.
A coalition consisting of Massachusetts, New Jersey, 16 other states, and the District of Columbia submitted a brief supporting the respondents. Their position contrasts with the coalition of states supporting the gun owners challenging the bans.
On the other side, the Second Amendment Foundation and its fellow challengers have received support from the National Rifle Association, Gun Owners of America, National Shooting Sports Foundation, and numerous other organizations defending the right to own commonly used rifles.
The United States also filed an amicus brief supporting the challengers.
The constitutional dispute is not about whether politicians believe AR-15s are desirable firearms. It is about whether the government has the authority to prohibit Americans from possessing arms protected by the Constitution.
The Supreme Court Must Decide Whether Common Use Means Anything
The Supreme Court is scheduled to hear oral arguments in Viramontes and Grant on December 2, 2026.
At the center of these cases is a straightforward constitutional question: Can the government ban an entire category of rifles that millions of Americans lawfully own?
The challengers argue that the Second Amendment’s text, America’s historical tradition of firearms ownership, and the Supreme Court’s own precedents prohibit such bans.
Their opponents are offering the justices several ways around that conclusion. Some argue AR-15s are too dangerous to qualify as protected arms. Others want to diminish the significance of common ownership. Historians point to Bowie knives and narrowly targeted Winchester regulations, while Giffords is prepared to argue for overturning Bruen if its application requires invalidating the bans.
None of those arguments changes the constitutional text or the reality of America’s longstanding tradition of civilian firearms ownership.
The AR-15 is an arm. It is commonly possessed by law-abiding Americans for lawful purposes. Its modern design and effectiveness do not make it an exception to the Second Amendment.
The Supreme Court does not need to invent another test or retreat from its existing precedents. It needs to enforce the Constitution as written.
The right to keep and bear arms does not disappear because gun-control organizations find the firearms Americans choose to own politically inconvenient.
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.