When the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear two cases—Grant v. Higgins and Viramontes v. Cook County, Illinois—that challenge bans on popular semi-automatic rifles in its next term, fear and trepidation ran like tremors through the social media and public statements of anti-gun groups and the politicians they support.
They are afraid that the Second Amendment of the U.S. Bill of Rights will again be applied by the U.S. Supreme Court.
John Commerford, executive director of the NRA’s Institute for Legislative Action, has a lot to say about this in this episode of The Armed Citizen Podcast.
“The Bruen case itself was NRA’s case from inception with our partners out in New York, and it cost quite a few dollars to get that to the Supreme Court and to win there,” said Commerford. “But that’s the foundation that all modern Second Amendment litigation has been built on.”
He next explained that we’ve “seen a tremendous increase in activity in Second Amendment cases” because of the NRA’s work on the 2022 Bruen decision. “In some because it’s necessary because of temper tantrums from blue states related to the Bruen case, and in others because it opened the door for these challenges, like we just saw with the SCOTUS granting cert in these two really important cases to finally fix that wrong.”
When asked about the handful of states that currently have some type of ban on what they define as “assault weapons” (and definitions do vary), Commerford said, “I think every state across the country that has tried to ban the most popular, commonly owned semi-automatic firearm in America, the AR-15, is nervous about these cases. There’s no other way to describe it. You saw something similar before Bruen … . This is how we got concealed carry in the District of Columbia through litigation, where blue states were pressuring the District not to go to the Supreme Court.”
NRA-ILA, meanwhile, is involved in a lot of litigation on this issue around the country. On this topic, Commerford said, “We’re fighting it on the state level. We’re fighting it on the federal level … . In my opinion, I’m very optimistic as to why the Court took [Grant v. Higgins and Viramontes v. Cook County, Illinois]. It all boils back down to elections have consequences. We’re seeing the negative consequence in the Commonwealth of Virginia, but we're seeing the positive consequence at the U.S. Supreme Court. We’re seeing it in the Third Circuit, where the NRA’s hardware challenge there was taken en banc by a conservative leaning panel. And those [victories] are thanks to the confirmation of Trump-nominated judges and justices by the U.S. Senate. President Trump is helping to reshape the American judiciary in the interest of freedom. So we need to make sure that everyone listening gets their friends, their family to turn out this November because we need to protect that nomination and confirmation process in the U.S. Senate for a full two more years and beyond. That’s how we truly fix the wrongs that have been heaped onto law-abiding Americans.”
You can find much more at NRAILA.org.
