Despite what partisans on both sides of the political aisle claim, anticipating what the current U.S. Supreme Court justices will decide is not easy. This high court at times upheld Second Amendment rights and at other times unexpectedly brushed aside critical cases.
That’s why speculation about how the justices will rule in Viramontes v. Cook County is already rampant heading into the fall term.
However, when The Reload asked multiple scholars about their expectations, the overall verdict was that SCOTUS will determine that the Second Amendment protects the right to possess so-called “assault weapons.”
Most scholars predict a Second Amendment victory
The gun rights outlet asked David Kopel of the Independence Institute, a prominent organization that produces legal briefs on Second Amendment rights, what he foresees this fall.
“The Court will affirm its longstanding rule that governments cannot ban common arms widely used for lawful purposes,” Kopel replied.
Several scholars echoed this sentiment, including F. Lee Francis, a gun rights expert who teaches the subject at Widener University. “I think the Court likely holds that semi-automatic rifles in common use, the AR-15 chief among them, are protected ‘arms’ and strikes down these feature-based bans.”
This high court is notably unpredictable pertaining to gun rights
This optimism, however, was not universal.
Some experts expressed uncertainty over what gun rights enthusiasts may expect from the Supreme Court. George Mocsary, a law professor and the Founder and Director of the University of Wyoming’s Firearms Research Center, noted that a landmark gun rights ruling is far from certain.
“I can’t confidently predict how the case will come out,” he explained to The Reload. “Some of the justices have gone on record about the need to take up a case like this and have voiced skepticism about these laws. But the Court will now have far more extensive briefing than it has had at the certiorari stage.”
While acknowledging that plaintiffs should have a strong case, Mocsary added that the high court must still comply with the Bruen test regarding the history and tradition of U.S. gun regulations.
In other words, nothing is certain.
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