The U.S. Supreme Court closed its first term of 2026 on Tuesday, and nine justices are off for summer recess before returning to the bench in October. On their way down the steps, the court revealed great news for Second Amendment supporters, especially in Illinois and Connecticut.
The court granted certiorari on the challenge to Cook County’s long-standing ban on popular sporting rifles, meaning the justices will hear arguments on the law this fall. The case against the local ban will be joined with a similar lawsuit against Connecticut’s gun control regime and heard together.
The Firearms Policy Coalition (FPC), the Second Amendment Foundation (SAF), and two Cook County residents sued over the prohibition of AR-15s and similar weapons.
Cook County’s 33-year-old ban may be nearing the end
Of course, the Illinois county immediately went on the attack, trying to justify the prohibition, with State’s Attorney Eileen O’Neill Burke defending the local law.
“We will not back down from defending Cook County’s long-standing ban on assault weapons,” the official wrote in a statement after the high court ruling. “These weapons of war are designed to inflict the maximum amount of carnage and destruction and have no place in our communities. Countless victims have already endured the devastating impact of gun violence.”
The county enacted the ban in 1993 and amended it twice since.
The 2A community has renewed hope that these prohibitions will fall
A promising previous attempt to overturn the law stalled in 2018 when a federal judge found it constitutional. The 7th Circuit Court of Appeals then upheld the decision, and the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the subsequent appeal.
The high court in 2025 rejected a request to hear arguments over Maryland’s semi-automatic ban. Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote at the time that justices “should and presumably will address the AR-15 issue soon, in the next Term or two.”
This week’s Supreme Court announcement is welcome news that justices will indeed address the controversy. The tens of millions of Americans who own these weapons need the high court to rely heavily on 2008’s District of Columbia v. Heller ruling.
The majority, led by Justice Antonin Scalia, determined then that the Second Amendment is not absolute and that governments may ban or limit certain firearms. That’s where it got interesting.
Scalia limited these weapons that fall under government control to those deemed “dangerous and unusual.” A cursory glance at the number of semi-automatic rifles owned by law-abiding Americans will rule out their being “unusual.”
The most recent data from the ATF Annual Firearms Manufacturing and Exportation Report indicates that over 30 million of these firearms are owned by Americans.
And it is important to note that this figure is likely much higher. As Scalia wrote, these weapons are clearly not “unusual” in the Republic.
Still, Connecticut attorneys argued that the sheer number of AR-15s and similar firearms owned by Americans somehow does not trigger Heller’s precedent.
The state asserted that the Second Amendment “does not bar states from banning particularly dangerous weapons that are neither used nor useful for self-defense just because manufacturers flood the market before states respond.”
The end of this Supreme Court term is noteworthy for a pair of victories gained by Second Amendment supporters after long and costly legal battles.
In U.S. v. Hemani, justices unanimously rejected the federal law that disarmed even casual marijuana users. And a 6-3 majority in Wolford v. Lopez struck down Hawaii’s brazenly unconstitutional “vampire rule.”
Hopes will be high for the fall session to lead to a resolution that reverses current wrongs and upholds both the Second Amendment and high court precedents.
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