Chinese American Attorney General William Tong Files Supreme Court Brief Defending Connecticut's AR-15 Ban
Connecticut Attorney General William Tong announced on October 21 that he had filed a brief with the U.S. Supreme Court in Grant v. Higgins, defending the constitutionality of Connecticut's post-Sandy Hook AR-15 ban. Tong is the first Asian American elected to statewide office in Connecticut history, and the first Chinese American elected attorney general in the nation.
In a statement, Tong said Connecticut's AR-15 ban is lawful, lifesaving and broadly supported, and that the facts and the law all point to an undeniable conclusion: AR-15s are unusually dangerous and excessively lethal, and Connecticut's ban is consistent with the nation's long history of regulating such weapons. He said both the district court and the appellate court agreed the law is fully constitutional and the U.S. Supreme Court should uphold it, and that his office will give the fight everything it has got to keep these weapons of war off the streets, out of schools and away from families.
Connecticut first enacted its assault weapons ban in 1993. In 2013, following the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, in which a gunman armed with an AR-15 style rifle murdered 20 children and six educators in under five minutes, the state updated the law to specifically add the AR-15 and the Bushmaster Model XM15 to the list of banned weapons, and updated the definition of prohibited assault weapons to cover semiautomatic, centerfire rifles capable of accepting a detachable magazine with at least one of the following features: a folding or telescoping stock, a pistol grip, a forward pistol grip, a flash suppressor, or a grenade launcher.
The brief argues Connecticut's ban is consistent with the historical tradition test established by the Supreme Court in the Bruen case, detailing bans on unusually dangerous weapons from fourteenth-century England through twenty-first century America. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit upheld the law in August 2025. Oral argument in the case is scheduled before the Supreme Court for December 2, when the court will also hear Viramontes v. Cook County, which challenges an assault weapons ordinance in Cook County, Illinois.
Published by GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 图：康涅狄格州总检察长童慧侠（William Tong）本人肖像，2023年1月4日就职仪式致辞时摄。图片来源：Wikimedia Commons，美国陆军／DVIDS 官方照片，摄影 Sgt. Matthew Lucibello。
