The U.S. Supreme Court could decide whether to hear legal challenges to Illinois’ so-called “Assault Weapons” Ban as early as next week.
The high court has distributed for a May 16 conference on the briefs filed by firearms owners, sellers, and Second Amendment rights advocates and by the Illinois Attorney General’s office.
The challengers are seeking persuade the Supreme Court to step in now, rather than wait months or years to address an “absurd” ruling from a federal appeals panel that upheld the law, but which challengers say would allow Illinois and perhaps other states to stand in direct defiance of recent Supreme Court rulings.
In February, attorneys representing the National Association for Gun Rights and others filed separate petitions asking the Supreme Court to take up their respective cases.
The plaintiffs said the Supreme Court needs to step in now to end the “defiance” of Gov. JB Pritzker, his Democratic allies in Springfield and Chicago, judges in Illinois, and elsewhere who they say have all but thumbed their noses at recent Supreme Court rulings in enacting Illinois’ “Assault Weapons” Ban law.
The petitions take aim at the split decision from a three-judge Seventh Circuit panel.
In that decision, issued November 2023, two judges well known for their support for other laws banning so-called “assault weapons,” tossed out a Southern Illinois federal judge’s injunction, which would have blocked Illinois from enforcing the so-called Protect Illinois Communities Act (PICA).
PICA includes several provisions banning a long list of semi-automatic firearms and so-called “large-capacity magazines,” which the state defined as ammunition magazines which can hold more than ten rounds.
Challengers say the law is a blatant violation of the Second Amendment, particularly as interpreted by the U.S. Supreme Court in recent decisions known as District of Columbia v Heller and New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v Bruen.
The brief filed by the National Association for Gun Rights in support of its petition added:
“The State insists that it has the power to decide which weapons it will deign to allow the people to use for self-defense. But Heller says the State has it exactly backwards. The government does not tell the people which arms they can have for self-defense. That matter is definitively determined by the collective choices of the American people.”
A ruling on the petitions for review has not come yet from the Supreme Court.
Read more at Cook County Record.
