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Doesn't take a big minority of assault weapons users to wreak havoc...

Nearly a decade before Monday's deadly mass shooting at a Fourth of July parade in Highland Park, Illinois, that left six dead and dozens injured, the Chicago suburb banned assault rifles like AR‐15s and AK‐47s.

That 2013 ban was swiftly challenged and the case made it all the way to the US Supreme Court, which ultimately rejected to hear it and instead let a lower court's ruling in favor of the ordinance stand.

But at the time, conservative Justice Clarence Thomas — who joined the nation's highest court in 1991 — opposed Highland Park's prohibition on assault weapons and large-capacity magazines, writing in a dissent that the "overwhelming majority" who use such weapons use them lawfully.

In Thomas' dissent, which was filed in December 2015 and joined by the late Justice Antonin Scalia, he called assault weapons "modern sporting rifles" and made references to the Second Amendment.