26 Million AR Owners Are Now in the Supreme Court Record

The petitioners’ merits brief in the consolidated cases Viramontes v. Cook County and Grant v. Higgins is on the Supreme Court docket. The question presented is one sentence: whether the Second and Fourteenth Amendments guarantee the right to possess AR-15 platform and similar semiautomatic rifles. Counsel of record is David H. Thompson of Cooper & Kirk. The parties include Cutberto Viramontes, Christopher Khaya, Firearms Policy Coalition, and the Second Amendment Foundation on the Illinois side.

The brief leans on Heller’s common-use rule and on a new survey. Georgetown Professor William English’s 2026 National Firearms Survey, dated August 24, 2026, is cited as a survey of 16,888 gun owners. According to the brief: 30.0 percent of American gun owners, or approximately 26 million people, currently own at least one AR-15 or similar semiautomatic rifle. Owners cited defense (83 percent), target shooting (65.1 percent), and hunting (50.2 percent). Of about 2.2 million defensive gun uses a year in English’s figures, 16.4 percent — 360,800 — involved rifles.

Firearms Policy Coalition’s August 28 release put the same ask in public: hold that so-called assault-weapon bans are unconstitutional. FPC President Brandon Combs: “The question is simple: Can the government ban some of the most popular firearms in America? The Constitution says no.” The brief attacks the Seventh Circuit for holding Cook County’s ban outside the Second Amendment’s plain text, and the Second Circuit for saying commonly possessed rifles can still be too “dangerous” to protect. Heller already answered that. An arm owned by tens of millions for lawful purposes is not “dangerous and unusual.” The Court granted these cases on June 30. The brief is the fight on the merits.