by Nicholas Ballasy
The U.S. Justice Department is urging the Supreme Court to strike down categorical bans on AR-15 rifles in Connecticut and Cook County, Illinois, arguing that the restrictions violate the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
The position was presented in a brief filed Friday by Solicitor General D. John Sauer in two cases before the Supreme Court: Viramontes v. Cook County and Grant v. Higgins.
The United States filed the brief as an amicus curiae, or “friend of the court,” in support of the challengers to the gun restrictions.
The cases concern laws that prohibit the possession of firearms classified as “assault weapons.”
Both Connecticut’s law and Cook County’s ordinance specifically cover AR-15 rifles.
Connecticut’s law reportedly provides an exception for certain firearms that were legally possessed before the ban took effect.
The Justice Department’s central argument is that the Second Amendment protects firearms that are commonly possessed by law-abiding Americans for lawful purposes.
“The right to keep and bear arms guaranteed by the Second Amendment is among the ‘fundamental rights necessary to our system of ordered liberty,'” the brief said.
According to the brief, “millions of Americans exercise that right by owning an AR-15 rifle, which is ‘the most popular rifle in the country.'”
“Yet the State of Connecticut and Cook County, Illinois, have made the possession of AR-15s a crime. Those bans are unconstitutional. A firearms restriction comports with the Second Amendment only if it is ‘consistent with the Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation,'” the brief noted.
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Nicholas Ballasy is a reporter for Just the News. Zachery Schmidt is the digital editor of The Star News Network and contributed to this story.
