Sandy Hook families urge Supreme Court to uphold state and local bans on AR-15-style rifles

Relatives whose loved ones were killed in the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting are making an impassioned plea to the U.S. Supreme Court to uphold state and local bans on certain semiautomatic rifles, citing the high body counts and devastating injuries the weapons can inflict.

The parents of five of the 20 first-graders killed in the 2012 Connecticut shooting and relatives of one of six educators who died filed a “friend of the court” brief on Wednesday, weighing in on two cases challenging bans in Connecticut and the Chicago area. Justices are scheduled to hear oral arguments in both cases on Dec. 2.

“The assault on Sandy Hook Elementary School, carried out by an untrained, 112-pound youth armed with an AR-15-style rifle, is graphic proof of the unusual and extreme lethality of that firearm and the harm it is capable of inflicting on American communities,” the relatives’ filing says. They added that they “seek to protect other American families from becoming casualties in another AR-15 killing spree.”

Gun rights advocates and groups whose lawsuits led to the two Supreme Court cases are arguing that it’s unconstitutional under the Second Amendment to ban semiautomatic rifles, which are legally owned by millions of Americans. Supporters of the bans say such rifles were designed for military use, are too dangerous for civilians and should be regulated like machine guns.

More than 40 other people and groups — most in favor of the rifle bans — also filed “amicus curiae” briefs on Wednesday. Such filings are submitted by parties who are not directly involved in the litigation.

Sandy Hook shooter killed 26 people with AR-15-style rifle

The 20-year-old Sandy Hook gunman, Adam Lanza, shot his way into the locked school in Newtown, Connecticut, and unleashed a fury of more than 150 bullets in about four minutes with a Bushmaster AR-15-style rifle fueled by high-capacity ammunition magazines. The massacre led Connecticut to ban such rifles in 2013 — the same law now before the Supreme Court.

Jennifer Hensel, whose 6-year-old daughter Avielle Richman was killed in the shooting, was quoted in the relatives’ brief saying Avielle was shot multiple times in the face and authorities told her that she would not recognize her daughter if she saw her body.

“A moral imperative is truly at hand,” Hensel said in supporting weapons bans. “Please, do not allow more blood to soak our Connecticut soil from assault-style weapons. A fundamental duty to protect all in Connecticut is at stake.”

A similar brief filed Wednesday by Sandy Hook Promise, the gun violence prevention group started by Newtown families, said another victim, 6-year-old Dylan Hockley, was shot five times — “his body destroyed so completely, his mother was told not to touch him to say goodbye as he lay in his coffin.”

“The effects of these weapons on children’s bodies are catastrophic and obscene,” the filing said.

Dylan’s mother, Nicole Hockley, a co-founder of Sandy Hook Promise, urged the Supreme Court to consider children’s safety.

“I know firsthand the devastation a semiautomatic rifle can inflict in minutes on the bodies, hearts, and minds of children — and the families who love them,” she said in a statement. “No family should have to live with that pain. As the Court considers this case, the consequences being experienced by children and communities cannot be an afterthought.”

Gun rights advocates filed suit to block rifle bans

Gun rights supporters say that while they sympathize with gun violence victims’ families and condemn mass shootings, the solution isn’t to curtail Second Amendment rights. They say school shootings happen despite bans on so-called “assault weapons.”

“Solving or at least mitigating school shootings is not about banning a type of gun,” said Konstadinos Moros, director of legal research and education for the Second Amendment Foundation, a plaintiff in the challenges to both the Connecticut and Cook County, Illinois, bans.

“While some guns are obviously more capable than others, school shooters inflict harm not because of the capability of their firearms, but because of the helplessness of their targets,” he said in an email to The Associated Press. “The real solution lies in proper school security, which can both more quickly respond to shootings, and deter attacks from happening in the first place, given that the depraved individuals who commit these sorts of crimes tend to pick ‘soft targets.’”

Justices to weigh whether bans violate Second Amendment

The current Supreme Court, which has expanded gun rights, announced in June that it would hear appeals challenging bans on the AR-15 and similar semiautomatic firearms in Connecticut and the Chicago area. The ban in Cook County was first passed in 1993. Lower courts have upheld both laws.

Similar laws are in place in about a dozen states, covering major cities like New York, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. Congress allowed a national assault weapons ban to expire in 2004, but Democrats have supported renewing it in response to mass shootings. States have also continued to pass their own laws, including recent measures in Virginia and Rhode Island.

It is the latest high-profile dispute over guns to reach the court since its conservative majority handed down a landmark ruling in 2022 that expanded Second Amendment rights and spawned challenges to firearm laws around the country. The court said that any gun laws must have a strong grounding in the nation’s historical traditions.