Attorney General Clark Joins Coalition of Attorneys General Defending Assault Weapons Restrictions Before the U.S. Supreme Court

Attorney General Clark joined a multistate amicus brief filed in the U.S. Supreme Court today defending the right of states to protect their citizens from the extraordinary lethality of AR-15 platform and similar semiautomatic rifles.

The brief, joined by a coalition of 17 other states and the District of Columbia, supports Cook County, Illinois, and the State of Connecticut as the U.S. Supreme Court prepares to hear whether the Second and Fourteenth Amendments allow States to regulate AR-15 and semiautomatic rifles. The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in two consolidated cases December 2, 2026, with an opinion expected before the current term ends in the summer of 2027. The two consolidated cases are Viramontes v. Cook County and Grant v. Higgins.

The amicus brief explains that government regulations of assault weapons are consistent with the Second Amendment because governments have broad authority to regulate weapons that are unusually dangerous and pose a serious public safety threat.

Assault weapons were designed and engineered for military combat, and to cause as many devastating injuries and deaths as quickly as possible. They are the most commonly used weapons in mass shootings in the United States. Commonsense assault weapons restrictions are intended to reduce these injuries and deaths.

The amicus brief filed today in the U.S. Supreme Court comes as the Court is slated to hear arguments in December 2026 in two cases involving challenges to assault weapons regulations in Cook County, Illinois, and Connecticut.

Cook County has regulated assault weapons since 1993, and strengthened its existing weapons ordinance with the Blair Holt Assault Weapons Ban in 2006, named after the 16-year-old son of a Chicago police officer was killed aboard a city bus after school.

Connecticut updated its 1993 assault weapons ban months after the December 12, 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, where a gunman armed with an AR-15 style rifle murdered 20 children and six educators in under five minutes.

The brief filed today argues that both laws are well within the country's historical tradition of reasonable firearm regulations, the test established by the U.S. Supreme Court in N.Y. State Rifle & Pistol Ass'n v. Bruen. In fact, the legal tradition of regulating unusually dangerous weapons stretches all the way back to the 1300s in England, and this tradition continued through the establishment of English common law and through our Nation's founding.

As the amicus brief explains, states and local jurisdictions have broad authority to enact restrictions on unusually dangerous weapons that pose a serious threat to public safety and public health. These reasonable restrictions include limitations on semiautomatic assault weapons, such as AR-15 and AK-47-style rifles.

New Jersey Attorney General Jennifer Davenport and Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Campbell co-led the amicus brief. They are joined by the attorneys general of Arizona, California, Colorado, the District of Columbia, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, and Washington.