Supreme Court to hear challenges to bans on assault weapons in the US

The highest court in the United States will listen to arguments which state that banning AR-15 rifles and other semi-automatic firearms are constitutional.

Under the Second Amendment to the US Constitution, citizens are afforded to right to keep and bear arms.

The court will eventually rule on whether the bans which some states have imposed on assault weapons, defined by their offensive rather than defensive use, contravene this amendment.

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The decision to take up the case comes after four of the court's conservative justices granted the review.

States including California, New York and Delaware, all have bans on these types of firearms.

The Clinton administration enacted a federal ban in 1994 - but Congress allowed it to expire in 2004.

Assault weapons were used in numerous mass shootings since the ban, including the Sandy Hook massacre in 2012 which took the lives of 26 children and educators at a primary school.

The courts decision to take up the case comes after the 2022 Bruen decision, which requires gun laws to pass a "history and tradition test", according to gun law expert Hayley Lawrence speaking to The Guardian.

“Bruen was this enormous sea change in constitutional interpretation. It bakes in judicial discretion, and supreme court justices don’t like how lower courts are applying the test they created,” she said.

“[These cases] are an opportunity to further clarify the metrology and application of the history and tradition test.”