A coalition of 19 state attorneys general, led by California Attorney General Rob Bonta, filed a brief in the U.S. Supreme Court supporting laws that restrict the sale, manufacture, and possession of assault weapons. The brief, filed in the case Viramontes v. County of Cook, backs restrictions enacted in Connecticut and Cook County, Illinois, and urges the court to uphold earlier appellate rulings affirming their constitutionality under the Second Amendment.
California enacted the nation's first state-level assault weapons restriction in 1989 following a hate-motivated shooting at Cleveland Elementary School in Stockton, where a gunman with an AK-47 style rifle fired over 100 times in three minutes, killing five children and injuring 30 students and a teacher, according to the attorney general's office.
The brief argues that assault rifles like the AR-15 are uniquely dangerous because their features facilitate mass killing. The coalition contends the U.S. has a long historical tradition of regulating particularly dangerous weapons and that the Supreme Court should reject arguments that the Second Amendment prohibits restrictions on widely available weapons.
Three-quarters of mass shootings involving 10 or more victims from 2012 to 2022 involved assault weapons, according to Attorney General Bonta. A 2026 report from California's Office of Gun Violence Prevention found that the state's mass shooting victimization rate from 2023 to 2025 was 38 percent below the national average.
Connecticut enacted its assault weapons law in 1993 and expanded it in 2013 following the December 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, in which a gunman armed with an AR-15 fired over 150 rounds, killing 20 children and six educators in under five minutes. Ten other states and several cities have similar restrictions on assault rifles.