Supreme Court’s Viramontes Is Not Moot

In the Viramontes v. Cook County case pending in the Supreme Court, Cook County has filed a Suggestion of Mootness in response to a Motion to Dismiss Petitioner Cutberto Viramontes from the case.  The question presented in the case is: “Whether the Second and Fourteenth Amendments guarantee the right to possess AR-15 platform and similar semiautomatic rifles.”  Cook County argues that standing in the challenge is based on Mr. Viramontes’ wish to obtain an AR-15 style rifle, but Christopher Khaya, the only other individual petitioner in the case, only wishes to obtain an AK-47 style rifle.  Mr. Khaya, the argument goes, does not have standing to litigate the question presented because he did not state he wishes to obtain an AR-15.

Yet Cook County itself previously classified the AK-47 as within the general category “AR-15 platform weapons.”  The Brief for the Cook County Respondents states:

Specific firearms are outlawed under the Ordinance, including the “AK-47,” “AR-15,” “Bushmaster XM15,” “Bushmaster Carbon 15,” “Bushmaster MOE series,” “ArmaLite M15,” “Armalite M15-T,” and “Olympic Arms PCR.” [Cook County, Ill., Code of Ordinances] § 54-211(7) (hereafter AR-15 platform weapons).

The County uses the term “AR-15 platform weapons” throughout its Brief as a convenient shorthand to describe the types of rifles it bans.  For instance, referring to how “the public increasingly purchased AR-15 platform weapons,” in the next sentence it describes a shooting in which the perpetrator used “a semiautomatic AK-47 style rifle.”  Describing the features that tie such rifles together, the Brief states: “The Ordinance is limited to ‘assault weapons’ that are strictly defined as ‘semiautomatic rifle[s]’ able to accept a detachable large capacity magazine and one or more of certain military-style features, such as a folding or telescoping stock, a pistol grip without a stock, a barrel shroud, or a muzzle brake.”  (There is actually nothing specifically “military-style” about such features.)

In its Suggestion of Mootness, the County attempts to separate these common features by distinguishing the different model names and designs.  Viramontes sought “to own a Smith and Wesson Military & Police AR-15 style semiautomatic rifle,” while Khaya “wants an IMI [Industrial Military Industries] Galil semiautomatic rifle,” which the petitioners themselves stated “is not an AR-15 style rifle but is largely based on the AK-47 design.”  But the question presented is not that narrow, instead referring generally to “AR-15 platform and similar semiautomatic rifles.”  To that, the County claims: “There are no record facts concerning whether the IMI Galil weapon operates similarly to an AR-15.”  For starters, how about the County’s own Brief describing their common features to be that they are semiautomatic rifles, have the ability to accept a detachable magazine, and have a pistol grip, folding or telescoping stock, and a muzzle brake?

In sum, in its Brief, Cook County refers to “AK-47” rifles as encompassed in the general term “AR-15 platform weapons.”  Its denial of that in its Suggestion of Mootness cannot be regarded as well taken.  Mr. Khaya has standing to litigate the question presented.  There are also two association challengers who thereby also have standing.

In any event, as Cook County notes in its filing, Viramontes is consolidated with Grant v. Higgins, the challenge to Connecticut’s prohibition on semiautomatic rifles, which is quite similar to that of Cook County. Therefore, regardless of what happens with Cook County’s suggestion of mootness, the Grant case will be unaffected, and the Supreme Court is poised to decide this fundamental issue that lays at the heart of the Second Amendment.