Assault weapons ban faces a Supreme Court test

Virginia’s “assault weapons” ban is currently frozen, waiting to see whether the Supreme Court will finally take a sledgehammer to these feel-good laws. The irony is hard to miss: the ban was supposed to make Virginians safer, but it’s been tied up in court because it so plainly runs afoul of the Second Amendment. That’s not a bug. It’s the whole problem with gun control legislation that targets the most popular rifle in America.

AR-15s are not a niche collector’s item. They’re the modern equivalent of the hunting rifle, owned by millions of law-abiding citizens who use them for sport, self-defense, and everything in between. Bans on these firearms are pure symbolism meant to satisfy voters who don’t know a bolt carrier group from a Jamba Juice smoothie. The Supreme Court has already said the right to keep and bear arms applies to weapons “in common use.” If that means anything, it has to mean the semiautomatic rifles that are literally everywhere.

The gun-control lobby can’t win on the facts, so it wins on mass shootings. That’s the ugly strategy. Every tragedy gets turned into an excuse to strip rights, while criminals go on ignoring every gun law already on the books. What happens when a ban passes? Only honest people obey it. The bad guys keep their rifles, and no one in Richmond can point to a single statistic showing these laws save a single life.

We’re not holding our breath for the Fourth Circuit to see it that way, but the Supreme Court is another story. The justices have a chance to end this circus and tell states that beheading the Second Amendment is off the table. If they don’t, we’ll keep watching politicians pat themselves on the back for making a law that does nothing but punish the people it’s supposed to protect. The Court should do its job and say so.

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