* Reuters…

The U.S. Supreme Court agreed on Tuesday to hear a challenge to the legality of state restrictions on assault-style rifles, giving the justices another chance to expand gun rights in a case that involves a type of weapon often associated with mass shootings.

The justices took up two appeals after ‌lower courts upheld bans in Cook County, Illinois, and Connecticut on powerful semiautomatic rifles such as AR-15s. The lower courts rejected arguments that the measures violate the U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment right to “keep and bear arms.”

The Supreme Court is expected to hear the case in its next term, which begins in October.

* The Sun-Times…

The justices said the two petitions were granted specifically as to the question raised in the Cook County case.

That is, “whether the Second and Fourteenth Amendments guarantee the right to possess AR-15 platform and similar semiautomatic rifles?”

A 2022 Supreme Court ruling laid out a two-step test for such gun laws. In New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, the justices held that if an individual’s conduct is covered by the Second Amendment, the government must then demonstrate that the law is “consistent with this nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.”

Certain Supreme Court justices have since shown an interest in considering the constitutionality of assault weapons bans. Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in 2024 that, if the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals “ultimately allows Illinois to ban America’s most common civilian rifle, we can — and should — review that decision once the cases reach a final judgment.”

* Crain’s…

Cutberto Viramontes and Christopher Khaya challenged the Cook County regulation with the backing of the Firearms Policy Coalition and Second Amendment Foundation. […]

In their appeal to the Supreme Court, the Cook County residents note that the justices have recently declined to take up the issue of assault-weapons bans, but that Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh had observed in an opinion that “this court should and presumably will address the AR-15 issue soon, in the next term or two.”

The Cook County residents said, “This case provides the court with a vehicle for following through on Justice Kavanaugh’s recommendation.”

Cook County State’s Attorney Eileen O’Neill Burke, in a brief urging the justices not to review the case, said that for more than 30 years, county officials “have been faced with the overwhelming, mounting, and unrefuted evidence showing that assault rifles are the weapon of choice for criminals and terrorists set on quickly massacring innocents, but are rarely put to lawful public use. They have thus determined that this warrants a prohibition on the possession of those weapons within the county’s target-rich and crowded urban confines.”

* More…

* SCOTUSblog | The Supreme Court and the right to bear arms: an explainer: The right to have semiautomatic rifles (such as the AR-15) is one of the most prominent Second Amendment issues still to be decided by the court. A semiautomatic rifle is a type of firearm which fires a bullet “each time the trigger is pulled, automatically ejecting the spent casing and reloading a new round.” So far, no federal court of appeals has struck down a state ban on these types of arms, although a few district courts have done so (and some of those cases are waiting to be decided by the appellate courts). Currently, there are at least two petitions pending before the Supreme Court on this issue: Viramontes v. Cook County and National Association for Gun Rights v. Lamont.

* Reuters | US Supreme Court turns away cases testing firearm age restrictions: The justices turned away appeals challenging a federal ban on handgun ‌purchases by people ages 18 to 20, as well as a similar state law in Florida imposing the same age requirement on all firearms purchases. Lower courts rejected the arguments by plaintiffs in those cases that those laws violate the U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment right to “keep and bear arms.”