Prosecutors Group Urges Justices to Keep AR-15 Bans Ahead of December Hearing

With oral arguments in the consolidated Supreme Court challenge to Connecticut and Cook County's "assault weapons" bans set for December 2, a coalition called Prosecutors Against Gun Violence has filed an amicus brief asking the Court to leave those bans in place.

Key points

• Who filed it: Prosecutors Against Gun Violence, co-chaired by Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg and Columbus City Attorney Zach Klein, submitted the brief on October 29 in Viramontes v. Cook County and Grant v. Higgins.
• What it argues: The brief claims the AR-15 is an "unusually dangerous military weapon" and that Bruen's historical-tradition test gives states extra leeway to regulate it, even though it's semi-automatic only.
• What's at stake: PAGV members enforce similar bans in New York, California, Delaware, Massachusetts, Maryland and Washington, all of which could be affected by the ruling.
• The rhetoric: Bragg and Klein both call AR-15s "weapons of war" and point to mass shootings in Dayton and Uvalde to justify the bans.
• The pushback: Mark Chesnut notes FBI data shows rifles of any kind are used in under 3% of U.S. homicides, with AR-15s only a fraction of that figure.

Quick take

This is one more brief in a stack the justices will have to wade through before deciding a case that could reshape gun laws nationwide. The "weapons of war" framing keeps getting recycled despite never squaring with actual military issue or homicide data, but it's clearly the strategy blue-state prosecutors are sticking with heading into December.

Read the full story: Mark Chesnut