Switchblade Rulings Fuel AR-15 Fight

Two federal court rulings this week knocked down restrictions on switchblades and body armor, and gun-rights lawyers say the reasoning behind both decisions could decide the fate of AR-15-style rifles at the Supreme Court.

State of play: On Wednesday, two separate courts reached the same conclusion using the same legal framework.

• Fifth Circuit: Ruled the Federal Switchblade Act's restriction on interstate commerce violates the Second Amendment, finding switchblades are commonly used "arms" with a long history of defensive and everyday use.
• Western District of New York: Struck down the state's civilian purchase ban on body armor, rejecting the state's argument that armor is a mere "tactical accessory" rather than a protected arm.

Both rulings lean on the same two-step test the Supreme Court built in Heller and Bruen. First, does the item fall within the Second Amendment's text? If yes, the government has to prove the restriction matches America's historical tradition of arms regulation — not just assert public safety concerns. In both cases, the government lost on that second step.

"Once what you want to do is shown to come within the text of the Second Amendment, the presumption is that the regulation is unconstitutional," said Second Amendment attorney George Lyon.

The intrigue: All three threads — knives, armor, and rifles — funnel into one case. Viramontes v. Cook County, which the Supreme Court has agreed to hear, asks whether AR-15-style rifles count as protected "arms" at all. The Seventh Circuit said no, reasoning that AR-15s are functionally comparable to machine guns and therefore outside Second Amendment protection entirely.

Lyon called that comparison "totally wrong." National Association for Gun Rights President Dudley Brown went further, telling Fox News Digital that however the Court rules on AR-15s will effectively steer how lower courts treat magazines, suppressors, automatic knives, and body armor going forward — because it's the same text-and-history test doing the work in every one of these cases.

NRA public affairs director Justin Davis framed it as a fight over whether the Second Amendment is frozen in 1791 or evolves the way courts already let the First Amendment evolve to cover social media and cell phones. "The world evolves, but the core fundamental rights never change," Davis said.

What to watch: The Supreme Court hasn't set an oral argument date for Viramontes yet, but both of this week's rulings will almost certainly show up in the briefing. If the Court holds that AR-15s are in common use and therefore protected — the same logic that just saved switchblades and body armor — it would gut the legal basis for assault-weapons bans nationwide, not just in Cook County.

The bottom line: three different weapons, one legal test, and the Supreme Court is about to decide how far it stretches.