An emergency application filed with Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett asked the court to intervene and issue an injunction against two separate “assault weapons” bans in Illinois pending appellate review.
One of the two bans is the state-level Protect Illinois Communities Act (PICA), which has been the subject of many lawsuits since being signed by Gov. JB Pritzker (D) on January 10.
Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker in Springfield, Illinois, Wednesday, June 16, 2021. (Justin L. Fowler/The State Journal-Register)
The issue in the case is:
Can the government ban the sale, purchase, and possession of certain semi-automatic firearms and firearm magazines tens of millions of which are possessed by law-abiding American for lawful purposes when there is no analogous historical ban as required in D.C. v. Heller (2008)…and New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen (2022).
The application goes on to note that the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois Eastern Division decided against plaintiffs on February 17, 2023.
U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Amy Coney Barrett speaks with Board of Trustees Chairman Frederick J. Ryan, Jr., at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library Foundation in Simi Valley, California, Monday, April 4, 2022. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)
Plaintiffs claim the district court “refused to the address the Heller/Bruen rule that a categorical ban of commonly held arms in constitutional,” suggesting the district court did not question the existence of such a rule but “ignored it.”
The application says, “The [district] court went off the rails and invented out of whole cloth the ‘particularly dangerous weapon’ doctrine. Under the district court’s new doctrine, weapons that a court judges to be ‘particularly dangerous’ are unprotected by the Second Amendment.”
Plaintiffs countered the district court by noting, “The Second Amendment protects arms that are commonly possessed by law-abiding citizens for lawful purposes, especially self-defense in the home.” They point again to Bruen (2022) and Heller (2008) to bolster their claim.
The application is Bevis v. Naperville and the State of Illinois, No. 22A948, in the Supreme Court of the United States.
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AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio and a Turning Point USA Ambassador. AWR Hawkins holds a Ph.D. in Military History, with a focus on the Vietnam War (brown water navy), U.S. Navy since Inception, the Civil War, and Early Modern Europe. Follow him on Instagram: @awr_hawkins. You can sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.