In September, several groups submitted amicus briefs in support of the petitioners in Viramontes v. Cook County and Grant v. Higgins, consolidated cases now before the U.S. Supreme Court challenging state and local assault weapons bans. Many of those briefs were filed by gun groups and gun manufacturers that have an obvious financial interest in the outcome of the case and have spent years trying to grow the number of assault weapons in civilian hands.
A close look at the briefs also reveals that many simply ignore the unique role assault weapons, particularly AR-15s, have played in mass shootings across the country, allowing attackers to fire dozens of shots in rapid succession with greater speed, control, and maneuverability than traditional firearms. All 10 of the highest-casualty mass shootings of the past decade involve assault weapons, and the laws now in jeopardy were enacted to help protect Americans from future incidents. But the briefs supporting the position that state and local laws banning assault weapons are unconstitutional almost universally fail to even acknowledge this basic fact.
Editor’s Note: Click here to read a summary of the Trump administration’s amicus brief.
Gun Industry Surrogates
It should come as no surprise that groups working to dismantle gun laws like the National Rifle Association, which draws support from the gun industry, did not mention mass shootings in their Viramontes amicus briefs. It was the NRA’s then-CEO Wayne LaPierre who proclaimed that the “only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun” as a way to avert federal gun reforms during a press conference less than a week after the 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, in which a gunman armed with a Bushmaster AR-15 and multiple high-capacity magazines killed 20 children and six teachers, and wounded two others.
The NRA submitted a brief in support of the Viramontes petitioners with the American Suppressor Association (ASA) — another industry-sponsored group focused on deregulating silencers — claiming that the Founding Fathers not only “knew of repeating arms,” or guns that can fire more than one shot before reloading, but also “embraced them” as a way to argue that the Second Amendment protects a person’s right to own an AR-15.
The National Shooting Sports Foundation, the gun industry’s trade association, filed a brief in which it admits that it “has a clear interest in this case,” as its “members include the Nation’s leading manufacturers of the semiautomatic rifles the laws challenged here ban.” The NSSF has spent years trying to normalize assault weapons — which it euphemistically calls “modern sporting rifles” — in lobbying efforts and marketing materials. In its brief, the group states that assault weapons bans, “and decisions upholding them, pose serious threats to NSSF, its members, and the law-abiding customers they serve.” But the organization did not mention the serious threats assault weapons pose to public safety, as countless mass shootings across the country have demonstrated.
Briefs From Assault Weapon Manufacturers
Several companies that manufacture and import assault weapons signed onto amicus briefs that, like the NRA and NSSF briefs, do not mention mass shootings whatsoever. But this omission does not change the fact that these companies are deeply connected to high-profile incidents.
For example, Palmetto State Armory (PSA), a South-Carolina-based gun manufacturer and retailer, filed a brief with the Firearms Regulatory Accountability Coalition (FRAC), a group that has challenged regulatory proposals designed to stop untraceable ghost guns and devices that make assault weapons deadlier, including bump stocks, which were used in the Las Vegas mass shooting, and arm braces, which have been used in at least five mass shootings. Of those five, two were carried out with short-barreled AR-15s equipped with arm braces and offered by PSA: the March 2023 mass shooting at the Covenant School in Nashville and the July 2025 mass shooting at a skyscraper in Midtown Manhattan.
Despite these deadly incidents, PSA and FRAC claim in their brief that AR-15s and similar rifles have “ordinary features and components,” as if they were not originally designed for the military.
Another notable amicus is Century Arms, a gun maker and importer that signed onto a brief with Gun Owners of America, a far-right gun group, and Citizens United. Century Arms’ AK-47-style assault weapons have been recovered in at least five mass shootings, including those that occurred at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, and the Gilroy Garlic Festival in Gilroy, California. Yet none of those incidents are mentioned in the company’s filing.
Few Law Enforcement Backers
Two amicus briefs in support of the petitioners were submitted by law enforcement organizations. The National Sheriffs’ Association and Western States Sheriffs’ Association filed one brief arguing that assault weapons are not “just used by mass killers.” In another brief, the Peace Officers Research Association of California, California Association of Highway Patrolmen, and Crime Research Prevention Center — an organization founded by widely discredited researcher John Lott — argued that assault weapons bans “produce no measurable reduction in murders, mass shootings, or officer casualties.”
The lack of support from other law enforcement organizations may be because police do not want to be outgunned by criminals armed with assault weapons. The most common assault weapon calibers can penetrate the bulletproof vests typically worn by police officers, and during the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, dozens of police officers waited 77 minutes to breach the classroom where the shooter was holed up after realizing he was armed with an AR-15, which an officer described as a “battle rifle.”
The Republican Retreat
While 25 Republican U.S. senators signed an amicus brief supporting the Second Amendment challenge in Bruen, only five signed a brief in support of Viramontes: Ted Cruz, Jim Justice, Mike Lee, Cynthia Lummis, and Jim Risch. In other words, dozens of Republican lawmakers chose not to put their names on a brief arguing in support of a ruling that no government — federal, state, or local — can restrict weapons of war.
A similar retreat happened in the U.S. House of Representatives, where support dropped from 83 percent of House Republicans for Bruen to less than 30 percent for Viramontes. Crucially, key members of House leadership who signed on for Bruen, including Speaker Johnson and Majority Leader Scalise, declined to join the supporting briefs this time around. Leading the House brief was Representative Andrew Clyde of Georgia, who owns Clyde Armory, a firearm retailer that sells assault weapons.
As with the other groups mentioned here, neither of these amicus briefs from lawmakers discussed mass shootings or the fact that assault weapons make them significantly deadlier, or offer any acknowledgement of the impact of gun violence on their constituents.