This is the big one. The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear Viramontes v. Cook County, the Supreme Court assault weapons ban case gun owners have waited decades for. The question is whether the Second and 14th Amendments protect your right to own commonly held semi-automatic rifles like the AR-15. For years the high court ducked this debate. Now they have to answer it.
A fight years in the making
This issue has been kicking around since the 1990s, and the courts have played games with it the whole time. Anti-gun states and counties kept passing bans on semi-automatic rifles that plainly don’t square with the Court’s own precedents, then daring anyone to make them stop. Cook County’s ordinance is a good example of how far these go: it bans acquiring, possessing, or transferring the covered rifles, and forces owners to surrender them or render them inoperable. If you own one, tough luck.
The Seventh Circuit problem
If you follow these cases, you know the Seventh Circuit has been a headache. After Bruen, lower courts were supposed to test gun laws against the nation’s historical tradition. Instead, the Seventh Circuit kept classifying the most common rifles in America as “weapons of war” that supposedly don’t belong in civilian hands, like they were reading a different rulebook than everyone else. Justices Thomas and Alito have already signaled their frustration with that framing in earlier writings.
We’ve seen this movie before
Remember what happened after Heller. Chicago fought tooth and nail to keep banning handguns until the McDonald decision forced it to stop. Some local governments treat the Second Amendment as a suggestion, and it takes a Supreme Court ruling with no wiggle room to change their behavior. That’s exactly why this case matters more than another round of circuit-court ping-pong.
Why this Supreme Court assault weapons ban case matters now
The other side sees it too. When anti-gun legal groups start publicly fretting about a 5-4 or 6-3 loss, the tide is shifting. If the Court strikes these bans down, the dominoes fall in California, New York, Illinois, and every other jurisdiction with a ban on the books. We’d finally get past procedural technicalities and get a straight answer on what the Second Amendment covers.
As of this writing, the case is headed for argument next term, so nothing changes on the ground yet. I’ll be covering every development here. Meanwhile, down in Texas these rifles are as legal as they’ve always been; we build them, work on them, and keep rifles in stock at the shop. If you’re new to the platform, start with my AR-15 beginner’s guide.
Lance Rankin is the owner and Chief Gunsmith of Western Sport, a family-run Type 07 FFL and Class 3/SOT dealer in Roanoke, Texas, serving shooters since 2007. Born and raised in Texas with over 50 years of experience handling firearms, Lance purchased Western Sport in 2017 and turned his lifelong passion into his profession. He specializes in AR-15 and AR-10 platform rifles, manufactures Western Sport’s own AR-15 line under the Rankin Industries brand, and runs the shop’s in-house Cerakote coating operation. When he’s not behind the counter or the workbench, you’ll find him on his ranch deep into the night, hunting coyotes with an AR-15 and thermal optics. Lance holds an MBA and personally shoots and tests the products Western Sport sells.
