By admin 
WASHINGTON – Gun regulations were a big focus of the Supreme Court this year. In the coming Supreme Court season, the issue will again be in the cross-hairs.
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This time, the focus will be on semiautomatic rifles like AR-15s.
Modern gun rules, the Supreme Court said in a landmark 2022 decision, can’t stray too far from historical weapons regulations to pass constitutional muster.
While the Supreme Court appeared to pull back from that controversial test just two years later, two Second Amendment decisions the conservative court handed down in June show it’s firmly in place − which could have implications for the coming showdown over semiautomatic rifles.
This year, the Supreme Court struck down Hawaii’s attempt to limit where guns can be carried in public. It also ruled, in a unanimous decision, that a law blocking regular drug users from having a gun was too broad. In both cases, a majority on the Supreme Court said neither restriction could be supported by laws dating back to the 1700s and 1800s.
“It looked like the court was going to accept relatively loose analogies in applying the Second Amendment to current gun laws,” said Adam Winkler, a UCLA School of Law professor and author of “Gunfight: The Battle Over the Right to Bear Arms in America.” He added: “But that doesn’t seem to be the case anymore.”
In the 2022 decision, the Supreme Court said a gun regulation must be “consistent with this nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.”
A `9-0 smackdown’
A major test of that approach is coming this fall, when the Supreme Court will debate whether state and local governments can ban possession of semiautomatic rifles like AR-15s as a response to mass shootings.
Aidan Johnston, director of federal affairs for Gun Owners of America, is optimistic that the court’s 2024 decision upholding a law banning domestic abusers from owning guns, in a case called U.S. v. Rahimi, was an aberration.
“I do think maybe things looked bleaker for gun rights activists after Rahimi and things look a lot better when you see a 9-0 smackdown,” Johnston said of the court’s recent unanimous ruling against a broad federal ban on gun ownership by marijuana users.
The court’s three liberal justices joined that opinion despite Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s ongoing complaints that the historical tradition test is “unworkable” and should be scrapped.
Gun violence prevention groups are likewise critical of the test but still see signs that it can be used to address modern-day realities.
Nothing in the recent decisions undermines the court’s previous rulings that the nation has historically restricted dangerous and unusual weapons – and can continue to do so, said Douglas Letter, the chief legal officer for the Brady gun violence prevention advocacy group.
“Obviously, there are disagreements on where that line should be drawn,” Letter said. “We think it absolutely should be drawn so that assault weapons bans … are constitutional.”
Landmark Second Amendment rulings
Courts have been debating what is allowed after the justices ruled in 2008 that the Second Amendment protects an individual’s right to possess firearms for traditionally lawful purposes.
That landmark decision was followed two years later by a ruling that the Second Amendment applies to state and local governments – the source of most gun regulations.
And in 2022, the court – in a case called New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen − created the “historical tradition” test.
But in 2024, the court said domestic abusers could be prevented from having a gun, ruling that only an “historical analogue” and not a “historical twin” is required, according to Notre Dame Law School associate professor Haley Proctor, who specializes in the Second Amendment.
“The decision led many to speculate that the court was backing away from Bruen’s demanding test,” Proctor recently wrote. “When it comes to common-sense measures like disarming abusive boyfriends, the court seemed like it was not going to be too picky about the government’s historical evidence.”
‘What kind of odd, elite parlor game is happening?’
Still, the historical test was robustly applied in the June decisions.
“What we see is the justices sort of tacking back and forth, trying to make this Bruen history and tradition test work across the spectrum of gun rights and regulation questions that come up,” said Darrell Miller, a University of Chicago law professor and Second Amendment expert.
Miller agrees with Jackson’s criticisms that the test has not delivered on its promises of being simpler to apply and more constraining on the ability of judges to reach their preferred outcome compared with the previous approach of analyzing whether a restriction was sufficiently tailored to a modern policy goal.
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Plus, the debates about historical analogies can leave observers scratching their heads, he said.
“When they come down with decisions that ask questions like, `Is a modern jet airplane more like a horse, or is it more like a carriage, or is it more like a boat?,’ I think people that are paying attention just feel a little bewildered,” Miller said. “It’s like, `What kind of odd, elite parlor game is happening up there?'”
Drinking habits of the founding fathers
In the case about whether regular use of marijuana can disqualify someone from owning a gun, for example, Justice Neil Gorsuch emphasized how much alcohol was consumed by John Adams, George Washington, James Madison and Thomas Jefferson.
“Had habitual drunkard laws applied to those who simply drank regularly, many notable early Americans could have faced trouble,” Gorsuch wrote in rejecting the old laws as justification for the modern one.
Joseph Blocher, co-founder of the Center for Firearms Law at Duke University School of Law, said that while history always matters when interpreting the Constitution, people on both sides of the gun control debate would probably be surprised by the level of historical detail in some of the decisions.
The daily drinking habits of the founding fathers may be interesting to read about, he said, “but there’s a disconnect there between what most people think the Constitution is for.”
“It would be weird if the federal law prohibiting gun possession by habitual users of controlled substances were to become constitutional if it turned out that James Madison drank only half a pint of whisky instead of a full pint,” he said. “It’s just a strange way to think about law. It feels to me like it’s asking an awful lot of history − more in some cases, really, than it can bear.”
Split lower court decisions
Applying the historical test to bans on AR-15s could be challenging because the weapons are far more powerful than the guns Americans used when the Second Amendment was adopted.
“From 1791 through the mid-nineteenth century, the ubiquitous firearm was a single-shot, muzzle-load firearm,” a divided panel of judges on the Chicago-based 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said in July when upholding Illinois’ ban on certain semiautomatic rifles and high-capacity magazines. “AR-15s equipped with large-capacity magazines are a far cry from these antecedents.”
Like other appeals courts that have upheld similar bans, the 7th Circuit judges said the laws could be supported by historical rules about Bowie knives. Because the knives’ large blades caused particularly bloody and gruesome injuries, many state legislatures banned them or imposed prohibitive taxes, the 7th Circuit panel said in its 2-1 decision.
But days later, a different appeals court ruled against New Jersey’s assault weapons ban.
Are Bowie knives like AR-15s?
The Bowie knife restrictions don’t work as an historical justification, the Philadelphia-based 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said in a 10-5 vote.
There’s no evidence that Bowie knives were commonly used for lawful purposes before they were restricted, the court said. By contrast, there are around 24 million AR-15s and similar sports weapons in circulation in the United States, according to the court.
“Even if semi-automatic rifles are disproportionately used in some crimes,” the majority said, “those may still represent a small fraction of those weapons’ overwhelmingly lawful use.”
‘The iPhone of guns’
Blocher, the Second Amendment expert at Duke University School of Law, said it’s hard to see how the Supreme Court could give a partial win to each side in the AR-15 case as the justices did in their decision about gun owners who regularly use pot.
In that opinion, Gorsuch described the ruling as a narrow one that left untouched gun bans on drug addicts or others considered too dangerous to have a firearm.
The upcoming AR-15 case has the additional challenge of how prominent the weapons have become in the national debate over guns. They’re connected in the public mind with mass shootings, making the bans a top target of groups trying to reduce gun violence. But they’re also immensely popular with law-abiding gun owners – sometimes called the “iPhone” of guns because of their popularity and how easy they are to customize.
“These weapons have become very, very wrapped up in identity on many sides of the debate,” Blocher said. “The stakes are high.”
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: What the Supreme Court’s test for gun rules could mean for AR-15s this year
Reporting by Maureen Groppe, USA TODAY / USA TODAY
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
Copyright Reuters or USA Today Network via Reuters Connect
This story was originally published July 26, 2026 at 5:08 AM.