A showdown over America’s bestselling rifle is heading to the Supreme Court this fall: Gun-rights groups are asking the court to consider whether the AR-15 and other rifles described as assault weapons are deserving of constitutional protection.
Should the conservative Supreme Court take up the case in its new term, it could put some of the gun-control movement’s biggest victories in jeopardy.
Nine Democratic states and Washington, D.C., have restrictions on the purchase or possession of AR-15 rifles and other firearms labeled assault weapons, with many enacted after a
20-year-old gunman used an AR-15-style rifle to kill more than two dozen first-graders and faculty at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut in 2012.
The high court in a landmark 2008 opinion said law-abiding Americans have a right under the Second Amendment to protect themselves with handguns.
But justices have never said if that right extends to the AR-15.
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