Connecticut’s Sandy Hook AR-15 ban prompts grammatical debate in Second Circuit

MANHATTAN (CN) — The Second Circuit heard arguments Wednesday in two cases from gun rights groups challenging Connecticut’s restrictions on AR-15 ownership, which tightened significantly after the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, in 2012.

Both suits target Connecticut officials over the state’s 2013 law titled An Act Concerning Gun Violence Prevention and Children’s Safety. The law included comprehensive gun reform in the wake of the Sandy Hook mass shooting, in which 20-year-old Adam Lanza shot and killed 26 people at the elementary school using an AR-15-style rifle. Twenty of Lanza’s victims were between six and seven years old.

One of the cases came from the National Association for Gun Rights, a controversial gun advocacy group that describes itself as more conservative than the National Rifle Association. Connecticut Citizens Defense League and the Second Amendment Foundation, also gun rights groups, filed the other lawsuit.

Since the law was passed, AR-15s have been effectively illegal in the State of Connecticut — much to the dismay of the plaintiffs in these two cases, who hold that the restriction violates the Second Amendment.

Unfortunately for them, a lower court ruled last year that the state law was consistent with the country’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.

On its face, both cases presented constitutional arguments. But in the Second Circuit on Wednesday, the arguments turned grammatical as counsel sparred over whether AR-15s should be considered “dangerous and unusual weapons” ripe for restriction under Supreme Court precedent.

National Association for Gun Rights attorney Barry Arrington contested that there is nothing “unusual” about the AR-15, as it’s one of the most popular weapons owned by Americans today.

“The state’s position is that it is constitutional to ban so-called assault weapons, even though the numbers show that 99.998% of those assault weapons were not used in homicides in 2022,” Arrington told the court. “Even the state admits that they have relatively rare usage in criminal activity.”

Arrington argued that it is up to the state to prove that the AR-15 is “dangerous and unusual” — language used in the 2008 landmark Supreme Court case District of Columbia v. Heller — not his clients.

U.S. Circuit Judge Alison Nathan pushed back. “You have a lot of emphasis on the phrase you just used, ‘dangerous and unusual,’” the Joe Biden appointee said. “Why can’t that mean, as the lower court suggested, ‘unusually dangerous?’”

Arrington shot back with another Supreme Court precedent: New York State Rifle & Pistol Association Inc. v. Bruen , a 2022 ruling that broadly expanded gun rights under the Second Amendment.

“That’s exactly what Bruen says the courts can’t do,” Arrington said. “That’s an empirical judgment Bruen said the courts can’t make.”

Cameron Atkinson, the attorney representing the Connecticut Citizens Defense League and the Second Amendment Foundation, cited the same precedents and echoed Arrington’s assertions about the commonality of AR-15s as a weapon owned by millions of Americans.

“There’s no history in the United States of a ban on the most commonly owned semiautomatic firearm in the country right now,” Atkinson said.

Josh Perry, on behalf of the Connecticut Attorney General’s office, disagreed. He argued Wednesday that the U.S. has a deep history of restricting the ownership of rifles that are just like the AR-15 — namely, the M16.

As acknowledged by the parties, AR-15-style rifles are similar to M16-style weapons. But a key difference lies in their firing modes. AR-15s are typically semiautomatic, while the military-focused M16s can be fired fully automatic. Perry argued that this alone doesn’t make the guns as different as the plaintiffs would like the court to believe, however.

“They still haven’t shown why these weapons are not just like the M16s, which it would be startling if states could not regulate,” Perry said, adding that an AR-15 can be “easily converted” to M16-style semiautomatic fire, and can “empty its magazine of 30 rounds in as little as five seconds.”

The Second Circuit panel, which alongside Nathan included U.S. Circuit Judge John Walker, a George H.W. Bush appointee, and U.S. Circuit Judge Debra Ann Livingston, a George W. Bush appointee, didn’t rule immediately following Wednesday’s arguments. If they reverse the lower court’s rulings, the cases will be remanded to the District of Connecticut.

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