“Go home. There’s nothing unconstitutional about this gun ban.”
That’s exactly what a federal judge said in response to our lawsuit challenging semi-auto and mag bans in the state of Illinois.
In one of the worst rulings our legal team has ever witnessed, the Bush-appointed judge defied both the Supreme Court’s Bruen ruling and the Second Amendment by upholding Illinois’ “Assault Weapons” Ban.
National Foundation for Gun Rights attorneys lost no time in filing an emergency appeal to the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals.
“End All Semi-Auto Bans” Litigation Blitz
This lawsuit — Bevis v. Naperville, IL — is one of seven lawsuits the National Foundation for Gun Rights has filed across the United States to end semi-auto and mag bans once and for all under the Supreme Court’s Bruen ruling.
Our first lawsuit in Colorado saw early victories, with an Obama-appointed judge issuing a temporary restraining order (TRO) blocking a gun ban in the first post-Bruen victory for gun rights, followed by another TRO issued by a Biden appointee. Both TROs acknowledged that under Bruen, gun bans don’t have a leg to stand on. Then Everytown’s lawyers got to work.
Enter the anti-gun legal horde
Intent on finding loopholes in Bruen, national anti-gun organizations like Everytown, Giffords, and March for Our Lives (David Hogg’s organization) jumped in on all our lawsuits, filing hundreds of pages of dreadful legal arguments in nearly all our semi-auto ban lawsuits. The arguments they brought ranged from legal fiction to ludicrous absurdity.
For instance, Giffords argued that “Plaintiffs’ test also dangerously fails to consider the potential of the firearms industry over-saturating the market to manufacture ‘common use.’” (In other words, manufacturers sold too many guns and they did it on purpose to artificially protect AR-15s under the Second Amendment — a bizarre argument that makes no sense.)
The US Conference of Mayors tried to blame the violence problem in our country on “domestic extremists that harbor anti-government sentiment” and who “self-radicalize via online engagement” –basically calling us and all our supporters domestic terrorists because we don’t trust the government and we share memes on Facebook.
Federal judge: “Gun bans consistent with the Second Amendment”
Unfortunately, a federal judge in Illinois listened to the anti-gun organizations’ outrageous arguments and mangled the Supreme Court’s standard in Heller and Bruen to rule against gun owners.
The Supreme Court previous said in Heller that states can ban weapons if they are “dangerous AND unusual,” like bombers or tanks. The federal judge twisted this to say that a state can ban guns that are “dangerous OR unusual.”
Since all guns are dangerous, all guns are obviously “dangerous OR unusual.” In other words, this judge basically said that a state can ban any gun it wants — a result completely in defiance with what the Supreme Court actually said.
Emergency appeal to the Seventh Circuit
As of this writing, our legal team is in the process of filing an emergency appeal to the Seventh Circuit to block the Illinois semi-auto ban, along with a local semi-auto ban passed by the City of Naperville, IL, where our plaintiff (a local gun store owner) lives.
The case, as our lawyers emphasize to the courts, is simple. The Second Amendment and the Supreme Court’s rulings all prohibit gun bans of commonly owned weapons — like America’s Rifle, the AR-15.
If the Seventh Circuit judges refuse to acknowledge this, we will appeal directly to the Supreme Court to defend the rights of gun owners by ending the leftist attacks on semi-automatic weapons for good. You can read our appeal here.
