By Dave Workman
Editor-in-Chief
Have the federal courts put all Second Amendment cases “on hold” while waiting for the U.S. Supreme Court to hear arguments and then issue a ruling—expected sometime in late June 2027—whether modern semi-automatic rifles are protected by the 2A?
That’s the opinion put forth this week by the Sportsmen’s Alliance, an Ohio-based activist organization which has been battling the Washington state Fish and Wildlife Commission and just recently demanded the ouster of four commission members in a letter to Gov. Bob Ferguson.
In a news release, the Alliance posits, “Judges across the country have officially hit the pause button on lawsuits challenging semi-automatic firearm and magazine bans.”
Bill Sack, senior director of legal operations for the Second Amendment Foundation, says “kinda.”
“Many of the hardware related cases are on hold but not all,” Sack said via email, “and not many other cases on other issues like carry.”
Sack and SAF are in a unique position to know what’s happening in the courts. It is their two cases known as Viramontes v. Cook County (IL) and Grant v. Higgins (CT), which are waiting to be argued before the high court after it convenes in October. This is a rare situation, when two consolidated cases brought by the same principle organization will be heard, and it may be the first time ever for gun rights cases.
Viramontes deals with a local ban on so-called “assault weapons” while Grant is challenging a statewide ban in Connecticut.
In a recent article published by the Seattle Times, SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan Gottlieb was optimistic.
“We think they would not have taken these cases if they weren’t going to overturn the lower court rulings and get rid of the ban,” Gottlieb said. “What it means is the bans in approximately 12 states and Washington, D.C., are going to bite the dust.”
That includes his home state of Washington, where Democrat Ferguson, when he was attorney general, boasted he had never lost a case to the gun lobby. If the Supreme Court strikes down bans on semi-automatics, he may have to eat those words.
According to the Sportsmen’s Alliance, the Sportsmen’s Alliance Foundation, which coincidentally shares the same “SAF” abbreviation with Gottlieb’s Second Amendment Foundation, stated, “Stays are a tool that courts have to conserve judicial resources. The stay allows courts to press pause on the case while other actions that impact the case get resolved. Here they are staying cases until the Supreme Court answers the underlying questions in the case—whether semi-automatic rifles and so-called ‘high-capacity magazines’ are protected by the Second Amendment and why they are protected by the Second Amendment. Once those questions are answered by the Supreme Court, the lower courts won’t have to answer them. They will only have to determine if the bans before them are factually and legally distinguishable from the Cook County, Illinois, and Connecticut bans currently before the Supreme Court.”
For example, federal challenges by several gun rights organizations against Oregon’s gun control Measure 114 are now stalled at the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. An affirmative ruling by the Supreme Court next year would likely throw the door open for the Ninth Circuit to either hear arguments against the Oregon measure, or simply strike portions dealing with modern semi-auto rifles.
Nervous Gun Prohibitionists
To underscore how concerned gun banners are about the Supreme Court’s decision to hear Viramontes and Grant, the Times article quoted Evergreen State Democrat Rep. Strom Peterson, who sponsored the state’s gun ban legislation. He told the newspaper that he is “concerned” about how the court may rule.
“I’m certainly nervous, concerned that this court will overturn commonsense gun legislation, as they’ve been a pretty activist court on a whole host of issues,” Peterson told the Times. “And that will mean communities that are less safe. It’s that simple.”
Well, it may not be “that simple.” A look at crime data published annually by the FBI repeatedly reveals that rifles of any kind are used in a fraction of homicides anywhere in the country. Each year, more people are murdered with knives, fists, feet and “blunt instruments” than are killed with rifles, including so-called “assault weapons.”
As to whether gun bans are “commonsense legislation,” the recent deadly mass shooting at the Seattle Center showed gun control laws in Washington, which also ban “large-capacity magazines” didn’t prevent two of the known shooters, including one who was killed, from having such magazines in the guns they were wielding. Additionally, neither the dead gunman nor the 15-year-old arrested by police in what is now acknowledge to have been a gang-related gun battle, could legally posses or carry a handgun.
Second Amendment advocates counter that it is nonsense, not “common sense,” to pass laws that only affect law-abiding citizens while doing little or nothing to underage perpetrators who shoot and kill other people.
The Sportsmen’s Alliance points to four examples of gun rights cases on hold:
- Virginia: State and federal courts stayed Virginia’s lawsuits, but the crucial statewide preliminary injunction remains in place, the Alliance says. Virginia’s ban on semi-automatic firearms and “high-capacity” magazines is still blocked and unenforceable.
- New Jersey: The Third Circuit Court of Appeals recently declared that state’s ban unconstitutional, but stayed its own ruling. New Jersey’s 1990 ban and 10-round magazine restrictions remain fully active while the Supreme Court holds the state’s petition.
- California: The Ninth Circuit officially stayed the landmark Miller v. Bonta “assault weapons” ban case and California’s restrictions remain in effect for now, the Alliance says.
- Washington State: The Supreme Court is holding the Gator’s Custom Guns “high-capacity” magazine ban challenge in limbo until the final Viramontes decision.
There is little doubt among grassroots gun rights activists that Democrat-controlled states will scramble to find ways to dance around any Supreme Court ruling on semi-autos.
In the meantime, everybody will wait. Second Amendment advocates have their fingers crossed while the gun prohibition lobby just might be running out of bogeymen in their crusade to disarm law-abiding gun owners, or at least reduce the number of guns they own.
If history is any indicator, that is not likely to happen.
