U.S. bishops urge Supreme Court to allow communities to regulate firearms under Second Amendment

The Supreme Court is set to consider whether or not Americans are permitted to possess AR-15 rifles and similar firearms.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops is urging the U.S. Supreme Court to allow local communities to regulate firearm ownership, weighing in on a high-profile federal case that could significantly reshape the nation’s gun laws.

The case before the high court, Viramontes v. Cook County, concerns a regulation enacted by Cook County, Illinois, banning more than 100 types of semiautomatic weapons, including the popular AR-15 platform.

Two plaintiffs, Cutberto Viramontes and Christopher Khaya, sued to dispute the regulations under the Second and 14th amendments to the U.S. Constitution. The lawsuit argues that the Supreme Court should rule on the case “to guarantee fundamental Second Amendment rights and to address the confusion in the lower courts” regarding Supreme Court precedent.

In their amicus brief regarding the legal dispute, the U.S. bishops urge the court to “[preserve] the traditional authority of political communities to regulate weapons.”

The “autonomy of local authority” is a significant part of “America’s historical tradition of federalism,” the bishops write, comparing it to the long-standing Catholic principle of subsidiarity, which holds that the authority closest to a local need is best suited to tackle the issue.

The principle of federalism does not allow for the wholesale redefinition of the Second Amendment, the bishops write. But, they argue, a “uniform constitutional standard need not require uniform firearm policy.”

Guns have historically been regulated differently throughout the U.S. depending on the locality, the bishops say, and the U.S. Constitution “does not require every community to exercise … its authority to regulate weapons identically.”

The prelates further argue that modern advances in weaponry mean firearms like AR-15s are “fundamentally dissimilar” from the standards of the 18th century; such weapons are “dangerous and unusual,” the bishops suggest, and are thus open to reasonable regulation.

Though the issue was brought to trial due to the local regulation, the ultimate question before the Supreme Court is whether the Second Amendment “guarantee[s] the right to possess [the] AR-15 platform and similar semiautomatic rifles.”

In the past 20 years the Supreme Court has significantly affirmed Second Amendment rights under the U.S. Constitution, including in the landmark 2008 case District of Columbia v. Heller, which upheld the right to own a firearm unconnected with service in a state militia.

Those rights were broadly expanded in subsequent Supreme Court rulings such as 2010’s McDonald v. Chicago and the 2022 decision NYSRPA v. Bruen. The latter decision upheld a constitutional right to carry firearms for self-defense.

In the 2024 decision United States v. Rahimi, on the other hand, the Supreme Court ruled that the Second Amendment does allow for individuals to be disarmed if they have been found to pose a credible threat to the physical safety of someone else.