DAVID E. MASTAGNI
TIMOTHY K. TALBOT
PORAC has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to strike down bans on the semiautomatic rifles its members carry on duty and are required to surrender when they retire. On September 4, PORAC, joined by the California Association of Highway Patrolmen (CAHP) and the Crime Prevention Research Center, filed an amicus brief in Viramontes v. Cook County, No. 25-238, supporting the petitioners’ challenge to Cook County’s rifle ordinance and Illinois’s Protect Illinois Communities Act. Those laws employ the same feature-based method as California’s assault weapon statutes, and the rule the court announces will determine whether a California officer may retain, after leaving public service, the commonly owned rifle he or she lawfully carried while employed.
PORAC members enforce the state’s firearms laws every day and live with the practical consequences of those laws after the shift ends. The brief was filed from that professional vantage point rather than a partisan one. Sound public policy disarms prohibited persons, confines violent offenders through firearm enhancements and protects the self-defense rights of law-abiding citizens. It does not blame the instrument of lawful self-defense while excusing the failure of state officials to enforce statutes already on the books.
The Common-Use Inquiry Ends the Legal Inquiry
Heller and Bruen establish that arms in common use for lawful purposes may not be banned. That protection extends to arms unknown at the founding and excludes from the government’s power to ban only those weapons that are both “dangerous and unusual.” AR-15 platform rifles satisfy the common-use test because Americans own an estimated 20 to 30 million of them, they remain lawful in 41 states and owners keep them for self-defense, target shooting, hunting and home defense. A firearm that tens of millions of responsible citizens possess for lawful purposes is not unusual, and treating these rifles as the functional equivalent of machine guns cannot be reconciled with Heller.
The Public Safety Data Does Not Support Banning These Rifles
The states defend these prohibitions as necessary public safety measures, yet criminals rarely acquire firearms through the lawful retail channels that the statutes regulate. Bureau of Justice Statistics prisoner surveys show that most offenders who used a gun stole it, found it, or purchased it on the street or in the underground market. Rifles of every type account for a small and shrinking share of homicides. In 2025, of 16,091 murders in which the weapon was identified, only 494 involved a rifle or shotgun, fewer than 3.1%. The rifle share of firearm murders was 4.8% before the 1994 federal assault weapons ban, 4.9% while that ban was in effect and 3.6% afterward, even as civilian ownership of AR-15s rose sharply.
Handguns, not rifles, are used in most felonious killings of officers, and the rifle share of those killings did not decline during the decade of the federal ban. National Institute of Justice evaluations found no discernible reduction in gun violence from that ban, and both RAND and a 2005 systematic review found no significant evidence that assault weapon restrictions reduce homicide or mass shootings. Mass public shooting data from 1998 through 2025 show that a majority of attacks used only handguns. Although effectiveness is not the historical test the court applies, the data refute the factual premises used to enact these statutes.
California Extinguishes the Officer’s Right at Retirement
Peace officers and their families face reprisal risks that do not end with a pension, yet California treats possession of these rifles as a revocable employment privilege. An officer may possess a registered “assault weapon” only while employed by a qualifying agency and only upon the agency head’s written certification of the specific firearm. When employment ends, that right collapses, and within 90 days, the departing officer must permanently disable the rifle, sell it to a licensed dealer, obtain a difficult-to-secure permit or remove it from the state (Cal. Penal Code §§ 30625, 30630, 30915). Federal LEOSA grants qualified retired officers a nationwide concealed-carry right, but it leaves California’s possession ban intact. If a trained and vetted officer may carry the firearm on duty for decades, there is no principled basis to treat that same officer as too dangerous to own it in retirement.
Feature Bans and Uneven Enforcement
When a legislature cannot ban a common firearm by name, it bans ordinary commercial features instead, including pistol grips, folding or telescoping stocks, flash suppressors and detachable magazines. California has carried that method from rifles to standard-capacity magazines and then to most modern handguns through the Unsafe Handgun Act (UHA). Few California officers carry a duty pistol that meets every requirement of the UHA, even though they carry those same pistols on duty when they are most likely to need them for self-defense. PORAC and CAHP have challenged the UHA in Boland v. Bonta.
A ban on a feature is, in operation, a ban on every common arm that bears it. Rahimi confirms that the nation’s tradition targets dangerous persons rather than the common arms responsible citizens choose. A right that a state can erase through incremental hardware mandates is, in the court’s words, no constitutional guarantee at all.
The brief points out California’s unserious response to violent crime and gun violence in making mandatory firearm enhancements discretionary, opening resentencing pathways for serious offenders and tolerating an Armed and Prohibited Persons System backlog of approximately 24,000 individuals known to possess firearms unlawfully. On June 14, 2022, two El Monte police officers were murdered by a gang member who should have remained in custody on a prior firearm-possession arrest. A government that is serious about gun violence prosecutes armed felons. It does not ban common rifles from law-abiding people, and it does not disarm retired peace officers.
What a Favorable Ruling Would Mean for Members
A reversal would confirm that arms in common use may not be banned and that feature-based restrictions are firearm bans. The same principle would reach California’s assault weapon statutes, magazine limits and the UHA. Officers who spent their careers carrying these rifles would no longer be required to disable, sell or exile them on the day they leave the job.
About the Authors
David E. Mastagni and Timothy K. Talbot serve as panel attorneys for the PORAC Legal Defense Fund. They advise PORAC on litigation, legislation and other matters of statewide concern to the membership, including the Second Amendment rights of active and retired peace officers.