The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday refused to block Illinois’ year-old assault weapons ban.
The high court had been asked to issue an injunction after the federal appeals court in Chicago last month upheld the law, which prohibits the possession, manufacture or sale of semiautomatic rifles and high-capacity magazines.
A three-judge panel of the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals voted 2-1 in favor of the law, ruling that weapons covered by the legislation don’t have Second Amendment protection.
The appeals court found assault weapons and high-capacity magazines “are much more like machine guns and military-grade weaponry than they are like the many different types of firearms that are used for individual self-defense.”
In doing so, it found that Illinois’ controversial gun law survived the first part of a two-step test laid out in a crucial June 2022 ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court. That means the court’s analysis could stop without exploring the nation’s historical tradition as required by the second step. But the appeals court said challenges to the state’s law fare no better there.
Still, the appellate court said that it did not set out “to rule definitively on the constitutionality of the act” and that its opinion stems from lower courts’ rulings on requests for preliminary injunctions against Illinois’ law.
Among them was a challenge from Naperville gun store owner Robert Bevis. His bid to block the law was initially rejected by U.S. District Judge Virginia Kendall in February. Kendall found that because assault weapons “are particularly dangerous … their regulation accords with history and tradition.”
Illinois’ law bans the sale of assault weapons and caps the purchase of magazines at 10 rounds for long guns and 15 for handguns. Anyone who already owns the banned guns is allowed to keep them but required to register them with the Illinois State Police by Jan. 1.
The law was enacted last January in response to the shooting at Highland Park’s 2022 Fourth of July parade that left seven people dead.
The Illinois Supreme Court narrowly upheld the law Aug. 11 in a lawsuit brought earlier this year by a central Illinois legislator who argued the sweeping ban violates the state constitution.
Meanwhile, the federal appellate court heard arguments that led to last month’s decision. During oral arguments, the panel seemed to struggle at the time with the recent guidance laid out by the U.S. Supreme Court.
In that decision, known as New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, the Supreme Court found that gun regulations must be “consistent with the nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.”
Opponents of the Illinois law argued the decision forbade governments from banning weapons that are “in common use.” Millions of Americans own assault-style weapons, attorneys say.
At least eight other states and the District of Columbia have some sort of prohibition on semiautomatic weapons, and several cases challenging those laws are making their way through the federal courts, relying at least in part on the Supreme Court’s decision in 2022 that expanded gun rights.
The Associated Press contributed