Cook County Is About to Answer for Banning the Same Gun the Founders Carried

The Supreme Court gutted New York's law restricting concealed carry back in 2022.

Now the justices have circled a date to decide whether that same fight comes to Cook County's AR-15 ban.

Alan Gottlieb says December 2 is the day Cook County's gun ban finally faces the Constitution it broke.

DOJ Tells the Court Cook County's Rifle Ban Is Unconstitutional

The Supreme Court just scheduled oral arguments for December 2, 2026, at 10 a.m.

The case is Viramontes v. Cook County, and it targets a ban Cook County, Illinois passed back in 2006.

A companion case, Grant v. Higgins, brings the same fight against Connecticut's ban.

Together they ask one question the Court has dodged for years.

Do the Second and Fourteenth Amendments protect your right to own an AR-15.

Trump's Justice Department just answered that question for the justices in writing.

Solicitor General John Sauer filed a 40-page brief alongside Assistant Attorneys General Harmeet Dhillon and Brett Schumate.

Their conclusion was blunt.

Cook County's ban and every ban like it are unconstitutional.

Second Amendment Foundation executive vice president Alan Gottlieb didn't hide his satisfaction.

"Reckoning day for lawmakers in Illinois, Connecticut, and elsewhere across the country is not far away," Gottlieb said, "and it's high time they are finally put in their place for infringing on the constitutional rights of citizens."

27 States and 60 Republicans Line Up Behind AR-15 Owners

Twenty-seven states, led by Tennessee and Kansas, filed a brief backing the challengers.

Their numbers do the talking.

The National Shooting Sports Foundation puts the number of AR-15 style rifles in American homes at more than 20 million.

Self-defense consistently tops the list of reasons owners give for buying one.

Meanwhile the FBI's own numbers show rifles of any kind were tied to just 401 homicides in 2024, compared to 6,246 murders committed with handguns.

Cook County banned the gun Americans use to protect their families while leaving the gun criminals actually use alone.

The states' brief made a comparison Democrats can't spin away.

Banning the AR-15 today, they argued, is the same as banning the musket in 1789 – the exact weapon colonial militiamen carried into battle for their own independence.

Rep. Andrew Clyde rounded up more than 60 House colleagues for a separate brief, and he didn't mince words about it: semiautomatic rifles are "well within our constitutional rights."

A Third Circuit panel already struck down New Jersey's assault weapons ban in July, months before the Supreme Court even set this date.

The lower courts are moving one direction. Cook County is about to find out if the Supreme Court moves with them.

The Founders Never Banned the Best Rifle of Their Time

Here's what Cook County and Connecticut don't want you thinking about during oral arguments.

The Second Amendment was written by men who owned the most advanced infantry weapons available in 1791.

District of Columbia v. Heller said the Constitution protects weapons "in common use" for lawful purposes, not just muskets frozen in time.

Bruen went further and told lower courts they can't invent modern safety rationales – they have to find an actual historical tradition of banning the weapon in question.

Cook County has no such tradition, because AR-15 style rifles didn't exist as a mass-owned civilian firearm until decades after the ban's supporters started demonizing them.

Harvard-published Second Amendment scholar Mark W. Smith has spent years documenting how lower courts keep dodging Heller's "common use" language to uphold bans anyway, which is exactly the dodge Cook County is banking on here.

If the Supreme Court applies the Bruen test honestly, Cook County loses, because you cannot outlaw the single most popular rifle in the country and call it history.

A ruling isn't expected until June 2027, but the fact that Trump's DOJ, 27 red states, and 60-plus House Republicans all lined up on the same side before a single argument was heard tells you which way the wind is blowing in Cook County.

Sources:

• Ryan Morgan, "Supreme Court Sets Dec. 2 Arguments in AR-15 Ban Cases as DOJ Backs Gun Owners," AmmoLand, September 2026.
• John Crump, "27 States Tell Supreme Court AR-15 Bans Violate the Second Amendment," AmmoLand, September 2026.
• Slay News Staff, "Supreme Court Sets Date for Landmark AR-15 Case That Could Gut 'Assault Weapons' Bans Nationwide," Slay News, September 8, 2026.
• Mark W. Smith, "What Part of 'In Common Use' Don't You Understand? How Courts Have Defied Heller in Arms-Ban Cases – Again," Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy.
• Daily Caller Staff, "Supreme Court Sets Date For Massive Showdown Over Semi-Auto Gun Bans," The Daily Caller, September 4, 2026.
• Federal Bureau of Investigation, "2024 Crime in the United States – Expanded Homicide Data," FBI, 2025.

Suggested image: A generic AR-15 style rifle displayed on a neutral background.