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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.
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The bishops ought to stay out of politics.
They do very little else but opine on politics.
Guns are not the problem. Rather, it is the people who do bad things with them.
Banning rifles will only affect law-abiding citizens who use those rifles to defend themselves and their families against people who do not abide by the law.
With all due respect to the USCCB, they should focus on the Catholic Church’s matters instead of trying to undermine the Second Amendment.
The Second Amendment recognizes the inalienable right to self-defense that any level of government is mandated to honor.
If our bishops would take a remedial course in the Catholic religion, they might learn about things such as human rights and moral imperatives as divine endowments and never political inventions.
This is my house Bishops, my wife, my family. I have a responsibility to protect them. You attend to your responsibilities and get out of my way.
Personally, I’d like to see the USCCB treated as “vexatious litigants” and debarred from their incessant amicus curiae briefs.
I may just buy another AR.
Which “bishops” wrote that… my guess is that staff (laity or priests) at the bishops conference wrote that.
Do we believe that each local community should be able to regulate freedom of religion? If not, why not?
The point of God given rights is that they don’t come from the state and shouldn’t be infringed by the state… any state.
Factually incorrect claims about the dangerousnes of modern firearms compared to historic arms should not be the basis for observing and protecting the inalienable snd God given right to self defense AND the means to defend yourself.
I don’t understand why our bishops feel a need to tweak the 2nd Amendment. Surely there are better things to turn their attention to?
I don’t care what need they “feel”. It’s not their call, they have no competence, charism or mandate in these matters.
They also don’t have homes, families or wives to defend, they’ve never been awakened in the middle of the night because the branch that broke in the wind banging on the house sounded like a forcible invasion attempt and realize the immediate need to rouse yourself, identify the noise, assess it and respond according. WE live in the world of Jamel McGriff and other innumerable feral predators, not them. I avoid confrontation, but I will not pusillanimously retreat, either and I will in circumstances I think present mortal danger, kill or be killed.
Their job is the vitality of the Church, not to insert themselves into a thinly veiled attack on my right to use the weapon of my choice for defense or to opine that states or municipalities should have a right to abrogate my rights.
Any rational person viewing the state of the Church sees a long-term decline, most especially in a squandered endowment of prestige. With some exceptions they have produced aging and inadequate census of priests, overworked and under suspicion due to past episcopal malfeasance. Couples that cohabitate, not marry, contracept and don’t even bother to Baptize the few offspring they are having. Empty pews on Sunday and confession lines on Saturday. Diocesan bankruptcies abound, and they treat it as a “fresh start” and effective fiscal management, rather than a shameful crawling to civil courts to evade creditors.
Most Bishops strike me as effete, effeminate and ineffective, a challenge to the charity of tolerating the incompetent. Some, such as Cupich, McElroy, Seitz, Bejarano (had a Mass with a drag queen, and apologized to the deviant class, so naturally promoted by Leo, part of his change of “attitudes” campaign?) and Stowe strike me as subversive ecclesial weevils that could substitute for syrup of ipecac.
Given the correlation in the past of sexual incontinence, laxity or libertinism (Bernardin, Gumbleton, McCarrick, Weakland, etc), with leftist activism and ecclesial disorder, I’d like to know how many Bishops are compromised by their personal peccadilloes. Whatever the appointment process, it is clearly is deficient.
I’m just so glad I’ll never likely meet these men without chests. The urge to correct what is no doubt a pillowy, limp handshake with the proper application of grip force would be overwhelming and I’m sure some would incur digital dislocation or fracture as a result. I’m sick of wolves and chihuahuas in miters.
If we can contemplate overturning the 14th amendment and the 19th by executive fiat then no amendment is safe. No matter how ‘sacred” it may be to some who idolize their firearms.
The second amendment was specifically designed and included to protect citizens from a tyrannical government. Although the founders did not know what progressive ideology was at the time, they were prescient in recognizing the dangers that ignorant ideologues could pose to the welfare of the nation and the freedoms we enjoy under the Constitution.
Communities cannot contravene what has been guaranteed by the United States Constitution WHICH IS THE RIGHT TO BEAR ARMS.
What don’t these stupid bishops not understand??
Well, they’re progressives, which means that their thinking is disconnected from reality, truth, and historical fact. A sad and embarrassing state of affairs.
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.”
What “traditional authority”?
I regard the USSCB as a domestic enemy.