Even as the Supreme Court plans to decide the constitutionality of arbitrary bans on popular semi-auto firearms, the U.S. Seventh Circuit upheld just such a prohibition.
A three-judge panel in Barnett v. Raoul sided with the state of Illinois on Thursday, overturning a 2024 lower court ruling that had struck down the ban. The 2-1 majority was penned by U.S. Circuit Court Judge Amy St. Eve, a Trump appointee, and joined by U.S. Circuit Court Judge Frank Easterbrook, the latter appointed to the bench by Reagan.
The court upheld the Illinois ban, citing changes in firearms technology since the Founding in 1791, while swatting away examples of early repeaters and automatic arms as "technologically flawed curios with limited practical utility." For a historical analog to the ban, the majority pointed to 19th-century state prohibitions on Bowie knives, citing the large blades were "both widespread and used for lawful purposes" when outlawed.
Dissenting from the majority was U.S. Circuit Judge Michael Brennan, a 2018 Trump appointee, who held the rest of the panel got it wrong.
Brennan:
Our Nation’s enduring traditions forbid governments from prohibiting firearms commonly owned for self-defense. Because the people have overwhelmingly chosen the AR-15 rifle and its magazine as their weapon of choice, they are protected by the Second Amendment.
Instead, the majority opinion holds that a state may prohibit the possession and sale of AR-15s and 30-round magazines. That conclusion cannot be reconciled with the “common use” test as applied in District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008), and is not supported by the historical record.
Barnett came to the Seventh Circuit in the form of four combined challenges (24-3060, 24-3061, 24-3062, and 24-3063) to the ban by a host of gun rights groups, retailers, and Illinois residents.
The ban, HB5471, was originally a proposal to regulate insurance adjusters but was amended in the State Assembly's January 2023 lame-duck session to include over 110 pages of new gun regulations. Passed on a Sunday by the state senate, the House swiftly concurred on a Monday, sending it to Democrat Gov. Jay Robert "J.B." Pritzker, who described it at signing as "one of the strongest assault weapons bans in the nation."
While the Seventh Circuit ordered Barnett remanded to a lower court with directions to enter judgments for the State, the nation's high court last week accepted a petition before it to decide if states and local governments have the authority to ban certain classes of firearms for arbitrary reasons.
“Today’s decision is exactly what we’ve come to expect from courts desperately contorting themselves to keep failed gun-control theories alive," advised the Firearms Policy Coalition in a statement. The group is among the plaintiffs in Barnett.
"While the opinion is unquestionably atrocious in both its legal reasoning and moral foundation, the good news is that today’s opinion is not the future of Second Amendment jurisprudence but the death rattle of the failed gun-control era – the last gasp of a dying authoritarian legal movement that has spent years engaging in judicial jiggery-pokery, inventing exceptions, rewriting history, misrepresenting reality, and treating the Second Amendment like a second-class right."
Banner image: "That rifle on the wall of the laborer's cottage or working class flat is the symbol of democracy. It is our job to see that it stays there." – George Orwell, 1940. (Photo: Chris Eger/Guns.com)
