Saying a Chicago federal judge essentially ignored at least two U.S. Supreme Court decisions, attorneys for a Naperville gun shop owner have asked a federal appeals court to slap a hold on the state’s so-called “assault weapons” ban.
On March 7, Robert Bevis and his shop, Law Weapons & Supply, along with the National Association for Gun Rights, filed a motion asking the U.S. Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals to issue an injunction, forbidding any police or other government agency in Illinois from enforcing the ban on a long list of semiautomatic firearms, which the state has labeled “assault weapons,” and the so-called “large capacity” ammunition magazines those firearms use.
The law, enacted by Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker and the Democratic supermajority in the Illinois General Assembly, generally prohibits Illinois residents from buying or selling the prohibited firearms and accessories, and directs Illinoisans who currently own the weapons to register them with the State Police.
Anyone who doesn’t abide by the law could face fines or imprisonment.
The law has sparked a blitz of lawsuits from thousands of individual plaintiffs across the state. Many of those plaintiffs joined together on four lawsuits filed in southern Illinois in state court. Those cases have resulted in restraining orders against the state, barring enforcement of the law against those particular plaintiffs.
However, those cases do not ask the court to strike down the law under the Second Amendment or any other part of the U.S. Constitution. Rather, they argue the law violates the Illinois state constitution.
The Illinois Supreme Court has agreed to hear one of those cases on an expedited basis in May, as Pritzker and other state officials seek to undo rulings from the Illinois Fifth District Appellate Court upholding the restraining orders, and from a Macon County judge who ruled the law unconstitutional under the state constitution.
In the meantime, however, the state also faces a series of lawsuits in federal courts in southern Illinois and Chicago, seeking to void the gun ban law under the Second Amendment.
Four of those cases remain pending in Southern Illinois District Court.
In the ruling, Kendall said she believed the state and Naperville gun bans should be allowed under the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution because she doesn’t believe the Second Amendment’s guarantee of the rights of Americans to keep and bear arms should extend to particularly “dangerous weapons.”
She agreed with Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul that the state’s interests in preventing mass shootings, such as the July 4 massacre in Highland Park, outweigh the constitutional rights of gun owners under the Second Amendment.
She claimed this reasoning holds up even under recent decisions from the U.S. Supreme Court, which require judges to evaluate gun bans and regulations using a test to determine if the regulations don’t disagree with the country’s historical treatment of weapons under the Second Amendment, and whether the rules don’t improperly target common weapons.
Kendall asserted past bans on “particularly dangerous weapons,” including Bowie knives, billie clubs and machine guns, means the state’s new ban should also be allowed.
And she asserted homeowners and others would still have access to a range of firearms for self-defense, so the new gun ban doesn’t infringe people’s rights to defend themselves.
In their appeal, Bevis and the National Association for Gun Rights argue Kendall badly misinterpreted the rules for Second Amendment interpretation laid down by the U.S. Supreme Court.
They noted Kendall particularly almost completely ignored the Supreme Court’s requirement that judges tasked with evaluating new gun bans consider whether banned firearms are “both dangerous and unusual.”
They asserted prior holdings by the Supreme Court demonstrate the state of Illinois cannot simply ban a wide range of commonly owned weapons because lawmakers and supporters of gun bans consider the weapons overly dangerous.
If the weapons are commonly owned, they said, prior Supreme Court rulings demonstrate the weapons cannot later be considered unusually dangerous enough to ban.
Further, they asserted Kendall also erred by balancing the state’s desire to ban the weapons in the name of public safety against the rights guaranteed to Illinoisans under the Second Amendment.
They said the judge’s reasoning represented an attempt to create a “backdoor” to allow the state to sidestep the tests established by the Supreme Court and “evade” the heightened scrutiny set by the court when evaluating laws and regulations that otherwise strip Second Amendment rights from the people.
Citing the Supreme Court’s opinion in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v Bruen, the plaintiffs said Kendall’s findings conflict with the Supreme Court’s determination that states and other governments cannot defend gun bans simply by claiming the law promotes public safety or some other “important interest.”
While the recent Supreme Court decisions still allow for a range of firearms use and ownership regulations, those decisions should force courts to take a highly skeptical view of any laws seeking to categorically ban certain kinds of firearms and accessories, altogether, the plaintiffs asserted – or at least a much more skeptical view than was expressed in the decision authored by Judge Kendall.
In their appeal, the plaintiffs also ask the Seventh Circuit to become the first court to issue an injunction statewide, and not just limited to the particular plaintiffs in the case.
In this case, Bevis asserted without an injunction, his shop would be driven out of business. And if the injunction isn’t applied statewide, his pool of buyers would be severely limited, amounting to the same harm as if his shop was barred from selling the banned weapons.
Bevis and the National Association for Gun Rights are represented in the case by attorneys Jason Craddock, of Oak Brook, and Barry K. Arrington, of Wheat Ridge, Colorado.