By Dave Workman
Editor-in-Chief
Asserting that modern semiautomatic rifles are “unusually dangerous and pose unprecedented societal concerns,” the gun prohibition lobbying group Sandy Hook Promise has filed a 27-page amicus brief with the U.S. Supreme Court asking that the high court allow guns to be banned even if they are in common use.
The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in the consolidated cases of Viramontes v. Cook County (Illinois) and Grant v. Higgins (Connecticut) challenging local and state bans of so-called “assault weapons” on Dec. 2.
Sandy Hook Promise, founded after the December 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Conn., argues, that the gun ban law adopted in Connecticut “is entirely ‘consistent with this Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.’” The brief leans heavily on the “welfare of children” and promotes the notion that even if a certain class of firearms is in “common use,” people should still be able to ban possession in a jurisdiction.
But attorney Kostas Moros, Director of Legal Research and Education for the Second Amendment Foundation—which spearheaded both cases now before the Court—has a different perspective, which he shared with TGM Thursday.
“Solving or at least mitigating school shootings is not about banning a type of gun,” he said. “While some guns are obviously more capable than others, school shooters inflict harm not because of the capability of their firearms, but because of the helplessness of their targets.
“The real solution lies in proper school security,” Moros stated, “which can both more quickly respond to shootings, and deter attacks from happening in the first place, given that the depraved individuals who commit these sorts of crimes tend to pick ‘soft targets.’”
He further noted that handguns, not rifles, were used in the deadliest school shooting in U.S. history, the April 16, 2007 attack at Virginia Tech, which claimed 32 lives and left 17 others wounded. The recent shooting at Silver Rail Elementary in Bend, Oregon was perpetrated by a teenager wielding a 12-gauge pump shotgun. That attack was stopped by a legally-armed private citizen who followed the killer into the school and fatally shot him.
“We saw the terrible toll that can be inflicted when the attacker is armed with a pump shotgun — a type of firearm no gun control organization calls to ban,” Moros noted. “It would have been much worse had an armed bystander not intervened.”
Interestingly, the Sandy Hook Promise amicus is distressed that the challenge of the gun ban seeks “an immunity for the Second Amendment that virtually no other constitutional right enjoys.”
On the other hand, no other constitutional right is subjected to background checks, waiting periods and even permits-to-purchase before it may be exercised. Nowhere in the brief is that mentioned.
A ruling is not expected until sometime in June 2027.
