Federal judge declares IL’s gun ban unconstitutional and stays in place for 30 days

“(The Protect Illinois Communities Act) is an unconstitutional affront to the Second Amendment and must be enjoined,” federal Judge Stephen McGlynn wrote in a 168-page ruling on Friday. pronunciation. “The government should not deprive law-abiding citizens of the guaranteed right to self-defense as a criminal offense. The Court shall suspend the execution of the permanent injunction for a period of thirty (30) days from the date of this order.”

Illinois banned the sale and possession of more than 170 semi-automatic firearms and magazines of certain capacities in January 2023. Federal lawsuits were filed in the following weeks.

The state argues that the banned firearms are too similar to military firearms, dangerous and unusual, and that banning them is in the interest of public safety. Plaintiffs argue that banning firearms from public ownership violates the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms.

Four consolidated cases in the federal court for the Southern District of Illinois were consolidated by McGlynn in the spring of 2023. After issuing a preliminary injunction against the law in April 2023, the state appealed. McGlynn’s preliminary injunction then lasted six days before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit stayed McGlynn’s injunction and later ruled in favor of the state on preliminary grounds.

The case then returned to district court, where McGlynn held a four-day trial in September. After the litigants filed the final brief last month, McGlynn issued his ruling in the final judgment on Friday.

“The Court is also not convinced that weapons such as the AR-15 and its relatives are ‘dangerous and unusual,'” McGlynn wrote.

McGlynn also criticized the state’s ban on limiting warehouse capacity.

“(T)his Court finds that these devices also have common use and legitimate self-defense purposes,” the judge wrote. “For magazines, every round matters in a self-defense scenario – reloading takes a lot of time during which the defender could be hurt or injured.”

When the preliminary issues were discussed in the appeals court, the majority of the three-judge panel argued that semi-automatic rifles such as the AR-15 were too similar to military firearms that can switch to fully automatic firearms. McGlynn reversed that decision on Friday with his final verdict.

“Therefore, the Court finds that ‘military use’ refers to weapons selected, acquired, tested, and issued to military members for use in combat,” he wrote. “With this in mind, none of the weapons, magazines or attachments banned by PICA can be called ‘military grade’ as they are not issued to the military for use in combat.”

Supporters of the gun ban say the law was needed to protect people from bad actors who might use such firearms in mass shootings, as happened in Highland Park on July 4, 2022.

“While the Court is sympathetic to those who have lost loved ones to gun violence, such tragedies are not an excuse to limit the rights guaranteed to the Illinois public by the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution,” McGlynn wrote. “Regardless of state governments’ desire to restrict the rights of law-abiding citizens under the guise of fighting crime, the Second Amendment convincingly protects the right of law-abiding citizens to defend themselves using weapons of general use.”

Ultimately, McGlynn said the government has not shouldered the burden of proving that the history and tradition of firearms regulation supports PICA’s “extensive reach, which includes hundreds of models of guns, magazines and attachments used by tens of millions of law-abiding American citizens.” .”

The Second Amendment Foundation praised McGlynn’s ruling.

“This is a major victory for the Second Amendment Foundation and the right to keep and bear Arms,” said SAF Founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb. “The gun ban lobby and their bought and paid for politicians just suffered a major defeat.”

An appeal from the state to the Seventh Circuit US Court of Appeals is expected.