The Supreme Court has not yet decided a case on state AR-15 bans, but a ruling is likely within the next term or two. In June 2025, the Court declined to hear Snope v. Brown, the challenge to Maryland’s ban, after considering it at 15 consecutive conferences. Justice Brett Kavanaugh took the unusual step of writing separately to explain that the denial was not an endorsement of the lower court and that the Court “should and presumably will” address the AR-15 question “in the next Term or two.”1The Hill. Kavanaugh Signals Supreme Court Will Address AR-15 Issue Several petitions raising the same question are now pending, and the arithmetic on the Court suggests one of them will likely be granted.
Why the Court Has Not Yet Taken a Case
On June 2, 2025, the Court denied certiorari in Snope v. Brown, which came out of the Fourth Circuit’s en banc ruling upholding Maryland’s Firearms Safety Act. It also denied review in Ocean State Tactical v. Rhode Island, a case about large-capacity magazines. Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Neil Gorsuch all voted to hear both cases. Four votes are needed to grant review; the fourth did not materialize.2SCOTUSblog. Supreme Court Declines to Hear Gun Control Challenges
Kavanaugh explained his own vote in a three-page statement. He wrote that the petitioners “have a strong argument” that AR-15s are in common use and therefore protected under District of Columbia v. Heller, and he called the Fourth Circuit’s contrary conclusion “questionable.” Kavanaugh said it is “analytically difficult to distinguish the AR-15s at issue here from the handguns at issue in Heller” because both are semiautomatic weapons commonly used for self-defense. His reason for waiting was procedural: parallel cases were still moving through the Second, Third, Seventh, and Ninth Circuits, and additional appellate rulings would “assist this Court’s ultimate decisionmaking.” He was explicit that the denial should not be read as agreement with the lower courts.3Supreme Court of the United States. Snope v. Brown, Statement of Kavanaugh, J.
Justice Thomas filed a solo dissent that went further. He said the Court had avoided the AR-15 question “for a full decade” and that waiting for more lower-court rulings was pointless because those courts appeared “bent on distorting this Court’s Second Amendment precedents.” Thomas argued that AR-15s are plainly “Arms” under the Second Amendment’s text and that Maryland had failed to carry its burden of showing a historical tradition supporting the ban. He also warned that leaving the question unresolved forces law-abiding owners to “rely on the goodwill of a federal agency to retain their means of self-defense,” which he called “no constitutional guarantee at all.”4Supreme Court of the United States. Snope v. Brown, Dissent of Thomas, J.
The takeaway from those separate writings is that three justices are ready now, one has publicly promised a fourth vote once the issue ripens, and the delay is about timing rather than merits.
The Petitions Currently Pending
As of mid-2026, the Court has several assault weapons petitions on its docket, all repeatedly distributed for conference without a grant or denial. That pattern often signals internal deliberation.
- Viramontes v. Cook County (No. 25-238), filed August 27, 2025, asks “whether the Second and Fourteenth Amendments guarantee the right to possess AR-15 platform and similar semiautomatic rifles.” It comes out of the Seventh Circuit’s decision upholding Cook County, Illinois’s ban.5SCOTUSblog. Viramontes v. Cook County
- National Association for Gun Rights v. Lamont (No. 25-421) asks “whether a ban on the possession of AR-15-style rifles and firearm magazines with a capacity in excess of 10 rounds violates the Second Amendment.” It challenges Connecticut’s law and was distributed for conference as recently as June 25, 2026.6SCOTUSblog. National Association for Gun Rights v. Lamont
- Grant v. Higgins (No. 25-566), also from the Second Circuit and Connecticut, asks “whether the Second and Fourteenth Amendments guarantee the right to possess semiautomatic rifles that are in common use for lawful purposes, including the AR-15.” It was distributed for the June 25, 2026, conference.7SCOTUSblog. Grant v. Higgins
A related magazine case, Duncan v. Bonta (No. 25-198), challenging California’s large-capacity magazine ban, has been relisted 19 times as of June 2026 without action.8Supreme Court of the United States. Duncan v. Bonta Docket If none of the pending petitions are acted on before the current term ends, they carry over to the “Long Conference” in late September 2026.9Duke Center for Firearms Law. SCOTUS Gun Watch
The Legal Question the Court Would Decide
The constitutional argument turns on two Supreme Court decisions. Heller (2008) held that the Second Amendment protects weapons “in common use at the time” for lawful purposes such as self-defense, and carved out an exception for “dangerous and unusual weapons.” The Court did not define either phrase precisely.10Penn State Dickinson Law. Common Use and Dangerous and Unusual Weapons After Heller
New York State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n v. Bruen (2022) then rewrote the analytical framework. Lower courts had been applying balancing tests; Bruen rejected those and replaced them with a “text, history, and tradition” approach. If the Second Amendment’s text covers the conduct, the government must show its regulation fits within the nation’s historical tradition of firearms regulation.11Harvard Law Review. Bianchi v. Brown, 138 Harv. L. Rev. 1153
Gun-rights petitioners argue that with an estimated 20 to 30 million AR-15-style rifles in civilian hands and the platform legal in 41 states, the weapon is in “common use” and cannot be banned.3Supreme Court of the United States. Snope v. Brown, Statement of Kavanaugh, J. The Court’s own language in Smith & Wesson Brands, Inc. v. Estados Unidos Mexicanos (2025), calling the AR-15 “the most popular rifle in the country,” is expected to feature in that briefing.12FindLaw. Smith and Wesson Brands Inc. v. Estados Unidos Mexicanos
States defending their bans respond that AR-15s are military-derived weapons whose firepower makes them “dangerous and unusual” regardless of how many are sold, and that a historical tradition of regulating exceptionally dangerous weapons supports the laws.13Justia. Bianchi v. Brown, Fourth Circuit En Banc Decision
Where Lower Courts Stand
No federal appeals court has struck down a state assault weapons ban since Bruen. The leading ruling is the Fourth Circuit’s 10-5 en banc decision in Bianchi v. Brown (August 2024), upholding Maryland’s law. Judge Wilkinson’s majority opinion held that the regulated weapons are “military-style weapons designed for sustained combat operations” that are “ill-suited and disproportionate to the need for self-defense,” placing them outside the Second Amendment altogether. The majority added that even if the weapons were protected, Maryland’s law fits a tradition of regulating “excessively dangerous weapons.” Judge Richardson’s dissent argued that because AR-15s are commonly used for lawful purposes, they are presumptively protected, and that the majority had improperly stretched historical analogies meant for weapons both dangerous and unusual.13Justia. Bianchi v. Brown, Fourth Circuit En Banc Decision
The Seventh Circuit followed suit in June 2025, affirming the Cook County ban in Viramontes v. Cook County.14Duke Center for Firearms Law. An Update on Challenges to State Assault Weapon and Magazine Bans A challenge to Illinois’s statewide Protect Illinois Communities Act went the other way at the district court, where Judge Stephen McGlynn found the law unconstitutional and issued a permanent injunction in December 2024; the appeal was argued at the Seventh Circuit in September 2025.15Bloomberg Law. Illinois Assault Weapons Ban Faces High-Stakes Appellate Test The Third Circuit heard en banc arguments in the New Jersey challenge in October 2025, the Ninth Circuit has had California’s Miller v. Bonta under supplemental briefing since April 2025, and the Second Circuit’s Connecticut case has been under submission since October 2024.
Ten states and the District of Columbia currently maintain assault weapons bans of some kind.14Duke Center for Firearms Law. An Update on Challenges to State Assault Weapon and Magazine Bans Because the lower courts have been reaching the same result while offering different rationales, there is no clean circuit split on the outcome, only interpretive divergence on the reasoning.
When a Ruling Could Arrive
Any petition granted from this point forward would be argued no earlier than the October 2026 term, with a decision likely in December 2026 or January 2027 at the earliest.9Duke Center for Firearms Law. SCOTUS Gun Watch Kavanaugh’s stated reason for waiting was that more circuit rulings would help the Court’s decisionmaking. Several of those rulings are now in hand or imminent, which weakens the procedural argument for continued delay. The core question, if and when the Court reaches it, is whether a weapon owned by tens of millions of Americans for lawful purposes can be banned by a state, or whether its prevalence places it beyond the reach of state prohibition.