A Chicago federal judge has become the latest to uphold a ban on so-called "assault weapons," keeping in step with a Chicago federal appeals court in determining Cook County's gun ban doesn't violate the Second Amendment or recent pro-gun U.S. Supreme Court decisions because the county ordinance bans "especially dangerous," military-style weapons that the judge said aren't "arms" protected by the Constitution.
The case arrived in federal court in Chicago in 2021 by plaintiffs Cutberto Viramontes, Rubi Joyal and Christopher Kaya, together with the Second Amendment Foundation and the Firearms Policy Coalition.
Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle backed the county and state bans on so-called "assault weapons."
| Charles Edward Miller from Chicago, United States, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
The complaint took aim at Cook County's "assault weapons" ban, in place since 2006. The ordinance bans the possession, sale and transfer of a long list of semiautomatic firearms, which the county has labeled dangerous.
First-time offenders under the ordinance face a fine of $10,000 and six months in prison.
The lawsuit, and the resulting court arguments, centered heavily on one particular weapon: the AR-15 rifle.
In the lawsuit, the gun owners and Second Amendment advocacy groups argued the ordinance violated the Second Amendment rights of Cook County residents to keep and bear commonly owned and used weapons for self defense, particularly as defined by recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions.
While the lawsuit continued, Democrats in Illinois pushed through a statewide ban, championed by Gov. JB Pritzker, on the same firearms and related accessories, especially so-called "large capacity magazines," or ammunition magazines that hold more than 10 rounds.
Both the state law and Cook County ordinance banned such items. Both houses of the Illinois General Assembly are led by Democrats from Cook County. Pritzker is also from Chicago.
Despite the "assault weapons" ban that has been on the books in Cook County for 18 years, shootings and other violent crime has surged in Chicago in recent years.
The state law also drew an array of legal challenges, with gun owners and Second Amendment groups similarly arguing the state had transgressed constitutional protections. Particularly, the lawsuits assert the state law and other local gun ban ordinances trample the right to keep and bear arms, as defined by the U.S. Supreme Court's decisions in the cases known as District of Columbia v Heller and New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v Bruen.
Those rulings require states and local governments seeking to ban certain firearms and other weapons to prove that the weapons are both "dangerous and unusual," and further require them to demonstrate the regulations are in keeping the U.S. history and tradition.
To this point, challengers have failed to secure a lasting court order blocking the state and other local authorities from enforcing the gun bans, even as the cases continue. Most recently, challengers have petitioned the Supreme Court to take up their appeal of a ruling by the U.S. Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals.
In that decision from late 2023, a divided three-judge panel at the Chicago-based federal appeals court refused to issue an injunction against the state's gun ban law.
In that ruling, Seventh Circuit Judges Frank Easterbrook and Diane P. Wood sided with Pritzker and state officials, saying the Second Amendment doesn't actually protect any weapons, so long as a state or local government can show the firearms or related accessories are particularly dangerous or closely correlated to "military-grade" weapons - even if neither the U.S. Armed Forces nor any other military in the world actually use such weapons.
In dissent, Circuit Judge Michael B. Brennan said that reasoning shoots a gaping hole in the Second Amendment, all but allowing the U.S. Armed Forces to "decide what 'Arms' are protected under the Second Amendment."
Challengers have urged the Supreme Court to toss out the decision, which they said had "thumbed its nose at" the Supreme Court and "distorted ... at every turn" the Supreme Court's holdings in Heller and Bruen.
However, Judge Pallmeyer said the Seventh Circuit's decision is binding on federal courts in Illinois, until either the Supreme Court or Seventh Circuit reverses Easterbrook and Wood's ruling.
Pallmeyer said that all but forecloses the challenge to Cook County's ordinance, as well.
She also said it made no difference to her that the challengers could prove the banned weapons aren't actually used by the military, nor do they produce the kind of sustained rates of fire produced by fully automatic weapons currently or formerly used by the Armed Forces.
Notably, arguments centered on the difference between the M-16, a well-known fully automatic rifle once used by U.S. military infantry, and the AR-15, a semiautomatic rifle that uses the same platform, but is strictly designed for civilian use and is not used by any military in the world.
The challengers noted that the Seventh Circuit judges greatly exaggerated the similarities between the M-16 and AR-15, and demonstrated that it can only generate rates of fire at least two-thirds less than those generated by a fully automatic weapon.
But Pallmeyer said such data points only produce "a distinction without a difference."
"There is no indication in (the Seventh Circuit's ruling) that this percentage difference in minute-to-minute firing capacity would render AR-15s different enough from M-16s (which the court assumed were military weapons) to render them subject to Second Amendment protection," Pallmeyer wrote.
In her ruling, Pallmeyer granted Cook County summary judgment in the lawsuit, a final decision which can be appealed.
Firearms Policy Coalition did not respond to a request for comment about the ruling.