County's Own Words Backfire

Cook County is trying to walk away from the Supreme Court case over its own rifle ban, and the county's own paperwork is making that harder.

State of play: On November 5, Cook County filed a Suggestion of Mootness asking the justices to toss Viramontes v. Cook County, No. 25-238, after lead petitioner Cutberto Viramontes asked to withdraw on October 29. The county argues that without Viramontes, the remaining individual plaintiff, Christopher Khaya, can't carry the case — because Khaya wants an Israeli-made IMI Galil, not an AR-15.

The legal question: Viramontes wanted a Smith & Wesson M&P15, a standard AR-15. Khaya wants a Galil, which runs on an AK-47-derived long-stroke piston system instead of the AR's rotating bolt and gas system. Cook County says that mechanical gap means Khaya has no personal stake in the AR-15 question the Court agreed to hear, and questions whether his Galil is even commonly owned for lawful purposes.

The intrigue: Second Amendment attorney Stephen Halbrook flagged the problem in a November 8 Reason analysis — Cook County's own October 27 merits brief, on page 8, lists the AK-47 and AR-15 among banned designs and then lumps them together as "AR-15 platform weapons." The county built its defense of the ban on treating these rifles as one broad category. Now it wants the Court to treat them as different enough to kill a plaintiff's standing.

That's not a minor inconsistency. The question the justices actually agreed to decide covers "AR-15 platform and similar semiautomatic rifles" — language broad enough to sweep in a Galil, especially given how the county itself described the ban's scope just weeks earlier.

Yes, but: The Firearms Policy Coalition and Second Amendment Foundation remain petitioners regardless of what happens to Viramontes or Khaya individually, and Cook County is separately contesting whether those organizations can carry the suit on their own. The Supreme Court hasn't ruled on any of this yet.

What's next: Even a full win for Cook County wouldn't end the fight. The county admits in a footnote to its own filing that dismissal wouldn't stop the Court from resolving the underlying constitutional question through the consolidated companion case, Grant v. Higgins, No. 25-566, challenging Connecticut's similar restrictions. The Court merged the two cases on June 30, 2026, and on November 9 granted the U.S. Solicitor General's request to join oral arguments — a sign the federal government wants a voice in how far Heller and Bruen extend to semiautomatic rifles.

Oral arguments are still docketed for December 2, 2026.

The bottom line: Cook County can't have it both ways — call every semiautomatic rifle an "AR-15 platform weapon" when defending the ban, then split hairs over bolt carriers and piston systems when trying to dodge review. The Supreme Court will decide whether that argument holds, but the broader question of whether governments can ban America's most common rifle is heading to oral arguments either way.