Connecticut Lawyer Asks Supreme Court to Declare Part of the Second Amendment ‘Extinct’ So the State Can Keep Its AR-15 Ban

Estimated reading time: 4 minutes

WASHINGTON, DC — A Connecticut attorney wants the Supreme Court to declare part of the Second Amendment “extinct” so Connecticut can keep banning semiautomatic rifles. David A. Robinson of North Haven, Connecticut, filed a friend-of-the-court brief in Viramontes v. Cook County and Grant v. Higgins, the two cases challenging the “assault weapons” bans in Cook County, Illinois, and Connecticut. He is not a party to either case. He is a private citizen, representing himself, handing the justices his own theory of the Constitution.

The brief hit the docket on Monday, Oct. 26. It is the first one supporting Connecticut’s ban to reach the Court, as reported by the Daily Caller News Foundation, which also notes that Robinson practices employment law and that Connecticut and Cook County filed their own briefs the prior Wednesday, Oct. 21, pointing to old bans on weapons like launcegays and slungshots. Oral argument is Dec. 2. A decision is expected in summer 2027.

Quick background. The Court agreed on June 30 to hear both cases, which the Second Amendment Foundation and its partners brought against the two bans. The question is simple: can a state outlaw a whole class of the most commonly owned rifles in the country, including the AR-15? SAF says no. Gun Owners Foundation filed its own brief saying the same thing.

Now to Robinson. His section headings are full sentences, so the argument reads straight off the table of contents. First, he tells the Court it “should pronounce what is, and is not, extinct about the Second Amendment” and “should not expect the American people to do so.” Why not? Because he “tried to start a movement to persuade the American people to amend the Constitution” and “failed because the people cannot agree on the language.” So he asked the country to change the Constitution. The country said no. His answer is to ask nine justices to do it for him.

Second, the militia is dead. “No American has been drafted (forced) into military service since 1973,” the brief says, and “the Selective Service System has replaced the ‘militia.'” He compares the militia clause to Major League Baseball’s pre-1947 “Whites only” policy, something that “made sense to most Americans at the time but makes no sense today.” I am still not sure what baseball has to do with it either.

Then he undercuts himself. In his own heading: “The right to self-defense is inherent, so the Second Amendment gives civilians the right to keep and bear arms necessary for self-defense.” That is a brief defending a rifle ban, conceding the right exists. The whole argument comes down to his opinion of what counts as “necessary.”

His policy case is a traffic analogy. “Capacity limits on rifles are analogous to speed limits on cars: They are constitutional and protect public safety.” A speed limit lets you keep the car. Connecticut’s law takes the car.

It gets stranger. Robinson walks the Court through his proposed 28th Amendment, which he says “says what Heller and Bruen say.” Heller and Bruen are the Court’s own rulings. He is asking the justices to erase a clause and replace it with a restatement of what they already decided. On the tyranny point, he asks “who decides if a government is tyrannical” and observes that “many people today (October 2026) believe that their local, state, or federal government is tyrannical.” That is a reason people want the right, not a reason to take it away. And the brief closes with “a conversation with a 9-year-old hiding in a closet with her classmates and teacher during a ‘lockdown’ a/k/a ‘active shooter’ drill,” which he says “illustrates that semiautomatic firearms are not a Second Amendment right.” A scared kid is real. A scared kid is not a constitutional argument.

The one honest line may be a passage DCNF pulled from the body of the brief. Robinson writes that many civilians will keep AR-15s no matter how the Court rules, “because many states give civilians that right. Those states, not the Second and Fourteenth Amendments, give them that right.” That is the patchwork gun owners already live with, and knowing it state by state is part of a responsible carry mindset, which is why I keep my concealed carry permit information pages current. Whether a constitutional right should stop at a state line is exactly what the Court agreed to decide.

More from USA Carry:

• Active-Duty Navy Sailor Serving 20 Years Over Demilled Parts and Replicas as SAF Pushes Supreme Court for Review
• Two Federal Courts, Two Weeks Apart, Split on Whether Silencers Are Protected Arms
• SAF and Partners Urge Supreme Court to Strike Down Ban on Marijuana Users Owning Firearms
• One Permit or Fifty? Minnesota Gun Owner Asks Supreme Court Whether Americans Need a License From Every State to Carry
• New Jersey Keeps Enforcing Its Rifle and Magazine Bans and Asks the Supreme Court to Park Its Appeal Behind Viramontes

This is one amicus brief, not Connecticut’s argument, and the Court has ruled on nothing yet. Both sides get their turn on Dec. 2.

I will continue tracking Viramontes v. Cook County and Grant v. Higgins through the Dec. 2 argument and the decision expected next summer.

Read the original story: Connecticut Lawyer Asks Supreme Court to Declare Part of the Second Amendment ‘Extinct’ So the State Can Keep Its AR-15 Ban