Sixty House Republicans just filed an amicus brief asking the Supreme Court to take up two cases challenging state-level bans on AR-15-style rifles. The brief, filed September 3, was led by Rep. Andrew Clyde of Georgia and co-signed by the American Center for Law and Justice.
They're not playing defense. They're asking the highest court in the country to end the debate.
The cases — Grant v. Higgins and Viramontes v. Cook County — challenge semi-automatic rifle bans in Connecticut and Cook County, Illinois. Both bans target firearms that millions of Americans legally own, and both have survived lower court rulings that gun rights advocates say flatly contradict the Supreme Court's own precedent.
The amicus brief doesn't mince words. It argues that "the [Second Amendment] protects, at minimum, arms that are in common use for lawful purposes." The brief traces the right to bear arms through the Federalist Papers, William Blackstone's writings, George Mason's Virginia Declaration of Rights, and the Militia Acts of 1792 and 1903. It invokes the 14th Amendment to argue the protection applies equally against state governments.
Clyde, who owns a gun store outside of his congressional duties, put it plainly: "Much to gun-grabbing Democrats' dismay, the Second Amendment is abundantly clear. 'Shall not be infringed' is not a suggestion, regardless of the firearm."
He added: "Semi-automatic rifles, including AR-15s, are owned by millions of law-abiding Americans. As an unapologetic voice in the fight to protect and restore our Second Amendment liberties, I'm proud to lead this amicus effort."
That's the part the gun control crowd doesn't want to engage with. The AR-15 isn't some exotic battlefield weapon. It's the most popular rifle platform in America, used overwhelmingly for sport shooting, home defense, and hunting. Banning it because it looks scary is the legal equivalent of banning a pickup truck because it has a brush guard.
The usual counter-argument from the left is that the Founders never envisioned modern firearms. Which is an interesting position to take about men who personally funded privateering warships and wrote the Second Amendment without any qualifier about musket caliber. The Militia Acts they passed didn't limit citizens to government-issued arms — they required citizens to supply their own.
Clyde said he's "confident the Supreme Court will declare these bans what they are: blatantly unconstitutional." That confidence isn't unfounded. Since the Bruen decision, the Court has made clear that the historical tradition of firearms regulation is the test — and there is no historical tradition of banning the most commonly owned rifle in the country.
More than 60 members of the House signed on, making this one of the largest congressional amicus efforts on a Second Amendment case in recent memory.
Connecticut and Cook County wrote laws telling law-abiding citizens they couldn't own the same rifle their neighbors in Virginia or Texas buy over the counter. Sixty members of Congress just told the Supreme Court that's not how the Constitution works.
Now we find out if the Court agrees — or if it needs another term to work up the nerve.