Association lends its name and resources to an eleven-organization amicus brief challenging semiautomatic rifle and magazine bans in Illinois and Connecticut.
The Indiana State Rifle & Pistol Association has joined as an amicus curiae in Viramontes v. Cook County, Illinois (No. 25-238) and Grant v. Higgins (No. 25-566), two cases now before the Supreme Court of the United States on writs of certiorari from the Seventh and Second Circuits. ISRPA stands alongside the New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, the Ohio Rifle and Pistol Association, the Virginia Shooting Sports Association, the Vermont Federation of Sportsmen’s Clubs, Gun Owners of Vermont, the New Hampshire Firearms Coalition, Florida Carry, the Montana Shooting Sports Association, the Oregon Firearms Educational Foundation, and Rights Watch International — eleven organizations joined by seven individual amici, including members of the NRA Board of Directors, a decorated retired Army colonel, a Marine combat veteran, and a former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Alabama. The brief was filed by counsel of record Kenneth T. Cuccinelli, II, with Earl N. “Trey” Mayfield, III.
Why This Case Matters
The question presented is as stark as it gets: whether the rifles and magazines most suitable for militia service — and therefore the arms most clearly protected by the Second Amendment — may be banned on precisely that account.
Two federal circuits said yes. The Seventh Circuit upheld Cook County’s ban by holding that the AR-15 is too much like a military rifle to count as an “Arm” under the Second Amendment at all — treating suitability for militia service as itself a ground for prohibition. The Second Circuit reached the same result for Connecticut by recasting the historical “dangerous and unusual” exception as a license to ban arms whose military-derived features it deems “unusually dangerous,” notwithstanding their common use by millions of law-abiding Americans.
Both rulings invert the constitutional text. The brief answers them with the founding-era statutory record: five colonies did not merely permit private ownership of militia-pattern arms — they commanded it, and enforced it, upon the whole population in ordinary civilian life. The Militia Act of 1792 required able-bodied citizens to arm themselves with the standard military musket of the day. There was no ban. Not ever. Under Miller, Heller, and Bruen, that history is dispositive.
Stepping Up the Fight
Make no mistake about what is happening in Illinois, Connecticut, New Jersey, and elsewhere: local and State governments are passing and enforcing laws that fly in the face of our God-given, constitutionally secured rights. This is spreading like a cancer. ISRPA intends to help kill it where it started — before it reaches Indiana.
ISRPA fields one of the strongest lobbying teams in the State. Our government affairs effort is led by Co-Chairs Kelly Myer and former State Representative Jerry Torr, supported by Guy Relford — “the Gun Guy” — and 44-year government affairs veteran and ISRPA President Charlie Hiltunen. That team has protected Hoosier gun owners at the Statehouse for years. Now ISRPA is extending its resources beyond our borders to stand with our Second Amendment brethren who are under fire from governments blatantly violating their rights.
YOUR SUPPORT IS THE WAR CHEST
Briefs of this caliber are not free, and neither is the fight ahead. Every dollar contributed to ISRPA helps defray the cost of this amicus filing and builds the war chest we will need for the next one — and the one after that. Anti-American, anti-Second Amendment efforts are well funded and relentless, both in this Country and in our State. Our answer has to be equally relentless.
Please consider a contribution to ISRPA today. Whether it is $25 or $2,500, it goes directly to the legal and legislative work that keeps these bans out of Indiana and pushes them back everywhere else.
ISRPA joined this brief because the fight in Cook County and Hartford is not somebody else’s fight. A rule that strips constitutional protection from the most common rifle in America does not stay inside one county line or one state border. We are meeting it at the Supreme Court, on the strongest ground available — the text of the Second Amendment and the statutes of the founding generation.
Freedom is not self-executing. It is defended — by people willing to pay for the defense.
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