Before hearing arguments on the constitutionality of Illinois’ assault weapons ban on Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Stephen McGlynn said he’d be “foolhardy” to think that the guns covered by the ban aren’t used for “bad things,” while also noting the rights of law-abiding citizens to bear arms.
Both sides of the gun issue were gathered in his East St. Louis courtroom, which the judge also acknowledged while calling for a civil debate.
“This is an important case,” said McGlynn, who was appointed to the federal bench in 2020 by then-Republican President Donald Trump. “They may see things entirely different than you do. We are fellow citizens and we want to treat (each other) with respect.”
The case before McGlynn was a consolidation of several lawsuits challenging the state’s ban on many high-powered guns and high-capacity magazines that were filed by groups including the Illinois State Rifle Association and the National Shooting Sports Foundation.
The lawsuits lean heavily on the case of New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, in which the U.S. Supreme Court found that the “plain text” of the Second Amendment protected the rights of the plaintiffs to carry guns for self-defense. The ruling also established a new constitutional standard holding that gun laws today shall be historically consistent with laws on the books in the 18th century, when the Second Amendment was codified.
Erin Murphy, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, acknowledged how some early 20th century firearms that expended multiple rounds with a single trigger pull weren’t commonly used by average citizens and were eventually banned. But she said the state’s ban on many semi-automatic guns — in which each round requires a trigger pull — is too broad because it prohibits guns that are commonly used by law-abiding citizens.
She said many people prefer these guns because they have features enabling them to fire more accurately at their target if they need to defend themselves, “instead of guns firing indiscriminately like submachine guns.”
Murphy cited Bruen when arguing “the historical tradition test is what is in common use today.”
For the defense, Christopher Wells, chief of the public interest division in the Illinois attorney general’s office, argued that the case law cited by the plaintiffs did not meet the burden to strike down the weapons ban. He sought to compare military-use rifles, like M-16s, with AR-15s, which are subject to Illinois’ gun ban and have been blamed on many mass shootings in the U.S., and argued there isn’t much “functional difference” between the two weapons.
At one point, McGlynn went back and forth with Wells, questioning why guns with certain safety features, such as an arm brace, are subject to the ban.
“You’re making it illegal and you’re making it illegal for people” who can use those guns for self-defense, McGlynn said.
“Those features are associated with mass shootings and other criminal uses,” Wells told the judge.
“Think about how we regulate many dangerous things in society,” Wells told the judge at one point, pointing to laws against unsafe baby cribs.
“Baby cribs are not specifically protected by the Constitution,” McGlynn replied, while adding that he understood the analogy.
McGlynn will take the case under advisement, and no date has been set for his decision.
The NSSF’s lawsuit argues that the Illinois ban “takes the radical step of banning nearly every modern semi-automatic rifle — the single most popular type of rifle in the country, possessed by Americans in the tens of millions.”
“All of that dooms any effort to claim that prohibiting these ubiquitous arms is consistent with ‘the historical tradition that delimits the outer bounds of the right to keep and bear arms,’” according to the lawsuit.
The lawsuit also says the state law bans magazines that are capable of holding more than 10 rounds for long guns and over 15 rounds for handguns, “even though tens of millions of Americans own hundreds of millions of such arms, which account for half of all magazines in circulation today.”
None of that is consistent with the Second Amendment, the lawsuit contends.
“Because the arms that Illinois has banned unquestionably are in common use today by law-abiding Americans, its ban is unquestionably unconstitutional,” the suit alleges.
The Illinois gun ban was signed by Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker in January just hours after being passed by the Democratic-controlled General Assembly, and was quickly the subject of legal challenges. Pritzker is a plaintiff in the lawsuit along with Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul and Illinois State Police Director Brendan Kelly.
A number of separate lawsuits over the weapons ban are being adjudicated through state court. Those lawsuits allege violations of the Illinois Constitution, including its equal protection clause. So far, various state court judges have granted temporary restraining orders in the lawsuits, preventing the law from being enforced against a well over 1,000 plaintiffs who are parties to those suits.
One of those lawsuits is pending in the Illinois Supreme Court.
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