NRA Files Amicus Brief in Supreme Court “Assault Weapons” Cases

The National Rifle Association, alongside the Independence Institute and the American Suppressor Association, filed an amicus brief on Friday in the consolidated cases Viramontes v. Cook County and Grant v. Higgins, which challenge the "assault weapons” bans of Cook County, Illinois and Connecticut, respectively.

Lower courts consistently uphold “assault weapons” bans by deeming the banned rifles a “dramatic technological change” and using that label to sidestep the Supreme Court’s holdings that common arms—including modern ones—cannot be banned.

The NRA’s brief traces the history of repeating arms from their first appearance around 1490 to show that modern semiautomatic rifles are not a “dramatic technological change,” but instead the product of five centuries of incremental advances in repeating-arm technology.

The brief also delves into the history of Bowie knives, because some courts uphold “assault weapons” bans by analogizing to nineteenth-century Bowie-knife regulations. The brief covers the knife’s origin, the term’s amorphous meaning, and the actual historical restrictions, then concludes that those laws could not justify a ban on Bowie knives—let alone on the Nation’s most popular rifles.

Please stay tuned to www.nraila.org for future updates on NRA-ILA’s ongoing efforts to defend your constitutional rights, and please visit www.nraila.org/litigation to keep up to date on NRA-ILA’s ongoing litigation efforts.