Office of the
Illinois Attorney General
Kwame Raoul

Chicago – Attorney General Kwame Raoul, as part of a coalition of attorneys general, filed an amicus brief in the U.S. Supreme Court today defending the right of states and local governments to protect their citizens from the extraordinary lethality of AR-15-platform rifles.

The brief supports Cook County and the state of Connecticut as the U.S. Supreme Court prepares to decide whether the Second Amendment allows states and local jurisdictions to regulate these weapons. The court will hear oral arguments in two consolidated cases, Viramontes v. Cook County and Grant v. Higgins, on Dec. 2, with an opinion expected before the current term ends in the summer of 2027.

“We have seen the damage that assault weapons can inflict, and these weapons of war have no place in our communities,” Raoul said. “States and local governments must be able to protect their residents by restricting access to assault weapons. I remain committed to promoting public safety by defending commonsense gun safety measures. My office has successfully defended the state’s prohibition on these weapons in both state and federal court, and I stand by Cook County in its efforts to protect Illinois residents.”

The amicus brief explains that government regulations of assault weapons are consistent with the Second Amendment because governments have long regulated weapons that are unusually dangerous and pose a serious public safety threat to their residents. The brief notes that this legal tradition stretches all the way back to the 1300s in England, and this tradition continued through the establishment of English common law and through our nation’s founding. These reasonable restrictions include limitations on semiautomatic assault weapons, such as AR-15-platform rifles.

Assault weapons were designed and engineered for military combat in order to inflict as many devastating injuries and deaths as possible as quickly as possible. It is because of these features that assault weapons are the most commonly used weapons in mass shootings in the United States. Commonsense assault weapons restrictions, like the ones enacted by Cook County and Connecticut, are intended to reduce these senseless injuries and deaths.

 Cook County has regulated assault weapons since 1993 and strengthened its existing weapons ordinance with the Blair Holt Assault Weapons Ban in 2006, named after the 16-year-old son of a Chicago police officer and a Chicago firefighter who was killed aboard a city bus after school. Connecticut updated its 1993 assault weapons ban months after the Dec. 12, 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, where a gunman armed with an AR-15 style rifle murdered 20 children and six educators in under five minutes.

  Attorney General Raoul was joined by the attorneys general of Arizona, California, Colorado, the District of Columbia, Delaware, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington.