Gun Control Groups Want Heller Overturned, Not Just AR-15 Bans
Gun control groups and their allies filed dozens of amicus briefs at the Supreme Court this week in support of so-called "assault weapon" bans. A handful go much further. The American Enlightenment Project, founded by Robert Ludwig, argues that the Second Amendment protects only state militias. Another group, Americans Against Gun Violence, says the Court got District of Columbia v. Heller wrong in 2008. Both groups want the justices to abandon the individual right that Heller recognized, and they want it done in a case about semi-automatic rifles.
Key Details
The briefs come in several batches, and they do not all make the same argument. Here is what the filings contain:
- Survivors of mass shootings filed one group of briefs.
- Another batch claims that legal access to semi-automatic long guns makes life harder and more dangerous for police officers, pastors, and healthcare workers.
- Many briefs focus on the "common use" question, which asks whether AR-15s and other centerfire semi-automatic rifles qualify for Second Amendment protection.
- A smaller set attacks the Court's Second Amendment rulings from the ground up, starting with Heller in 2008.
The American Enlightenment Project's website says that overturning Heller is "the surest, quickest way" to end what it calls a gun violence crisis. The group's brief leans on a collective-rights reading of the Second Amendment. Americans Against Gun Violence says Heller "effectively elevates the interests of the gun lobby over the intent of the Founders." Neither brief offers a new theory. The collective-rights argument has circulated for decades, and the brief dresses it up as historical discovery.
The briefs also cite historical sources. The American Enlightenment Project's brief argues that "the people" in the Second Amendment means the states as political communities. Tench Coxe, writing in 1789, described the people as confirmed "in their right to keep and bear their private arms." At the Massachusetts ratifying convention in 1788, Samuel Adams proposed language protecting peaceable citizens from federal interference with their arms.
Background
In Heller, decided 5-4 in 2008, the Court struck down D.C.'s ban on handgun possession in the home. It held that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to keep and bear arms, separate from militia service. Two years later, in McDonald v. City of Chicago, the Court applied that right to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment. In New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, decided in 2022, the Court set a text-and-history test for evaluating modern gun laws. Each of those decisions rejected the collective-rights reading that these amici now want revived. The Court has not wavered on the individual right since Heller, and the lower courts have followed it.
Gun control advocates have pushed for years to narrow Heller through new interpretations. Most of their energy has gone into defending bans on AR-15s and similar rifles. Now the amicus briefs reach past the rifle ban question and go after the foundation of the Court's modern doctrine.
Why It Matters for Gun Owners
Every gun owner in a state with an assault weapon ban has a direct stake in how the Court answers the common use question. States with bans on semi-automatic rifles, including California, New Jersey, New York, Illinois, and Maryland, would see their statutes tested under the Court's Second Amendment framework. A ruling that AR-15s are in common use would make those bans far harder to defend under Bruen. A ruling that treats them as outside Second Amendment protection would give states room to restrict millions of rifles already owned by law-abiding citizens.
The Heller challenge matters for a different reason. If a future Court accepted the collective-rights theory, the Second Amendment would stop protecting individuals in the home. Handgun owners in every state would lose the core holding that D.C. lost in 2008. Pay attention to the Court's opinions in this case, the questions the justices ask at oral argument, and whether any justice signals interest in revisiting Heller. Those signals will tell you how much weight the briefs actually carry.
DownRange Analysis
These briefs will not change the outcome by themselves. The Court has affirmed the individual right in Heller, McDonald, and Bruen, and the historical record that the amici ignore supports that reading. Militia service and individual rights existed side by side in the founding era. The amici treat them as either-or, and the sources they ignore say otherwise.
Under Bruen, the government must justify a restriction by pointing to historical analogues. A collective-rights theory does not help the government on that test. It asks the Court to erase the test's starting point. Gun owners should expect the briefs to influence commentary and lower-court rhetoric more than they influence the justices. Still, the filings show what the opposition wants. Read the briefs, count the states with semi-auto bans, and support the organizations that defend your rights in court.
