'Assault weapons' bans are on their way to the Supreme Court

The Supreme Court is set to weigh into a massive Second Amendment legal war over bans on some of the most popular firearms in the country, teeing up the high court’s most critical gun ruling in half a decade during the next term.The high court will examine whether “assault weapons” bans, which typically outlaw the purchase of AR-15 and similar semiautomatic rifles, are constitutional under the Second and 14th amendments. The pair of lawsuits, which were consolidated before the Supreme Court, challenge bans in Cook County, Illinois, and Connecticut, and the group backing both legal challenges, the Second Amendment Foundation, believes the eventual ruling will have as big of an impact on gun law as the Supreme Court’s 2008 decision in District of Columbia v. Heller and 2022 decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen.Bill Sack, senior director of legal operations at the Second Amendment Foundation, told the Washington Examiner that the case’s importance to Second Amendment rights will be “massive” and “pretty much as big as it gets.”

“This is the next ‘great white whale’ of the gun advocacy space, so it doesn’t get much bigger,” Sack said. “What is at stake is whether the Second Amendment protects the most popular firearms in the country.”Case is poised to be a major precedent for gun law at the Supreme Court