By Dave Workman
The U.S. Supreme Court returned Monday for the October 2026 session, but in the Second Amendment community, all eyes are focused on Wednesday, Dec. 2 for the long-awaited oral arguments in a pair of cases challenging bans on so-called “assault weapons,” Viramontes v. Cook County (Illinois) and Grant v. Higgins (Connecticut).
Both cases involve the Second Amendment Foundation and various partners, and they cover the bases. Grant is a challenge of a statewide ban, while Viramontes focuses on a local ban. An affirmative ruling—expected sometime in June 2027—would make it impossible to impose an outright ban on modern semiautomatic rifles.
In reporting about the Viramontes case, PBS ignored the Grant case, and also made one other error. PBS stated, “The Supreme Court will decide whether the Second and 14th Amendments give people the right to possess semiautomatic weapons.”
Second Amendment advocates have long insisted the amendment doesn’t “give” anybody anything. The Second Amendment was written to protect the pre-existing fundamental right to keep and bear arms from government infringement. Why the establishment media continually gets this wrong has never been explained.
Indeed, the entire Bill of Rights was authored to protect basic rights from government overreach, as noted at this year’s Gun Rights Policy Conference in Dallas by Jared Yaniis, host at Guns & Gadgets on YouTube. (See related story.)
The Dec. 2 oral arguments will be watched closely by both sides, and both questions by the justices and answers by opposing counsel will give strong hints as to how the Court will come down on this thorny issue.
The PBS story quotes David French, an attorney and New York Times columnist, observing, “The vast majority of jurisdictions in the United States, even if you’re able to ban an AR-15, don’t ban AR-15s. The democratic process has kind of worked its way through in the gun control arena.”
An affirmative ruling which says AR-15 and similar rifles are protected by the Second Amendment would put the proverbial monkey wrench into state level bans not just in Connecticut but in New York, New Jersey, Washington, California and a handful of other states controlled by Democrats.
