A Landmark Second Amendment Showdown Is Coming For more than a decade, lower courts have wrestled with a question the Supreme Court has repeatedly declined to answer: can states and cities ban AR-15-style rifles and other semiautomatic weapons often labeled "assault weapons"? That era of avoidance just ended. On June 30, 2026, the Supreme Court granted certiorari in two consolidated cases — Viramontes v. Cook County (out of the Seventh Circuit) and Grant v. Higgins (out of the Second Circu …