Gov. Matt Meyer is part of a group governors filing an amicus brief with the U.S. Supreme Court, asking it to uphold state laws against assault style guns.
The Supreme Court will hear arguments in December challenging state-level assault weapon bans– consolidating two cases from Illinois and Connecticut. It considers whether U.S. Constitution guarantees the right to possess assault weapons, like AR-15s.
But it has national implications, including in Delaware, which has its own assault weapon ban, which took effect in 2022.
The Second Amendment was ratified in 1791. And Meyer said from his perspective, "that governors in 2026 can't stand up and protect their citizens from people ...struggling in certain ways going to get a semi-automatic weapon and going to elementary schools, that's crazy."
Back-to-back mass-casualty shootings, where assault rifles were used to kill twenty-one people in Uvalde, Texas and ten people in Buffalo New York spurred Delaware to pass its ban on assault weapons in 2022.
Delaware’s law doesn’t ban assault weapons already existing in the state, but does prohibit the manufacture, or sale of them going forward.
Meyer is among 11 governors to sign an amicus brief. It argues that as the chief executives of their states– they have a responsibility to make decisions for their states’ emergency response, public health, and victim-services systems.
