{"id":94154,"date":"2023-07-06T17:22:47","date_gmt":"2023-07-06T22:22:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=94154"},"modified":"2023-07-06T17:22:47","modified_gmt":"2023-07-06T22:22:47","slug":"94154","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=94154","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

Pritzker compares AR-15s to “missile launchers” while calling for a federal ban<\/a><\/p>\n

Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker seems to be channeling his inner Joe Biden in his defense of the state\u2019s ban on so-called assault weapons and \u201clarge capacity\u201d magazines. Biden has famously (and erroneously) proclaimed that while the Second Amendment may protect muskets, it never allowed citizens to own cannons; a statement that\u2019s been thoroughly\u00a0debunked<\/a>\u00a0on\u00a0multiple occasions<\/a>\u00a0yet still emerges from Biden\u2019s mouth on a regular basis.<\/p>\n

The thrust of Biden\u2019s argument, factually deficient though it may be, is that the Second Amendment doesn\u2019t protect the right to keep and bear any and all arms, and Pritzker is now piggybacking on the president\u2019s pontifications with a ludicrous comparison\u00a0of his own<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u201cWe\u2019ve banned assault weapons. We\u2019ve banned high capacity magazines. We\u2019ve banned switches that turn regular guns into automatic weapons and here in Illinois those are things that will keep people safe and alive, but we need a national ban,\u201d Pritzker said.<\/p>\n

The White House Wednesday highlighted Illinois\u2019 law as what the Biden administration would like to see nationwide.\u2026<\/p>\n

To the consolidated lawsuit challenging the state\u2019s gun and magazine ban, Pritzker said he\u2019s \u201cheartened\u201d after last week\u2019s hearing in the Seventh Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals. The governor cited some of the judges\u2019 questions focused on whether the issue is a \u201cpopularity contest which guns we\u2019re going to allow.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBecause the people who were advocating for semi-automatic weapons were saying \u2018well gee, everybodies got one now, so you can\u2019t ban them.\u2019 Well that\u2019s ridiculous,\u201d Pritzker said. \u201cIf everyone had a missile launcher, we shouldn\u2019t ban missile launchers?\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I confess that I\u2019m not up to speed on the legality of owning missile launchers, but it\u2019s perfectly legal to own a grenade launcher\u2026 as long as you\u2019re willing to register it under the NFA and pay a $200 tax stamp. But as long as missile launchers cost millions of dollars, I don\u2019t think Pritzker has to worry about a Patriot missile system being erected by a private citizen in Chicago or Joliet. We\u2019re not talking about exotic weapon systems that will never be in common use for self-defense, we\u2019re talking about commonly-owned rifles lawfully possessed by tens of millions of Americans for hunting, recreation, self-defense, and other lawful activities.<\/p>\n

Todd Vandermyde, who\u2019s consulting plaintiffs in the challenge to Illinois\u2019 ban, said more gun control won\u2019t make the streets safer. He said the governor\u2019s other policies are \u201can abject failure.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThey don\u2019t go after the criminals. \u2018Oh no, we\u2019re going to give them electric home monitoring. Oh no, we\u2019re going to let them go out for 48 hours. Oh no, we\u2019re not going to require cash bail,\u2019\u201d Vandermyde told The Center Square, referring to the state\u2019s latest changes to the criminal justice system.\u2026<\/p>\n

Vandermyde said the case isn\u2019t about missile launchers.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey just keep jumping to the absurd that if you allow rifles, shotguns and pistols then you have to allow all this other stuff. And nobody is arguing [that], that\u2019s not even before the court in any way,\u201d Vandermyde said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Vandermyde\u2019s correct in noting that this argument is more useful to politicians than to the attorneys defending the state\u2019s ban, but Attorney General Kwame Raoul\u00a0is\u00a0<\/em>deploying a\u00a0similar argument<\/a>\u00a0that\u2019s equally absurd. As the\u00a0Chicago Sun-Times<\/em>\u00a0reported back in March:<\/p>\n

Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul on Thursday filed a brief defending Illinois\u2019 assault weapon ban, arguing the weapons restricted by the newly enacted law aren\u2019t commonly used for self-defense and that large capacity magazines are accessories \u2014 not \u201carms.\u201d<\/p>\n

It also argues the country\u2019s founding fathers owned guns that could only fire a single shot before reloading \u2014\u00a0proving assault weapons and large capacity magazines weren\u2019t in \u201ccommon use\u201d when the Constitution was ratified.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe assault weapons restricted by the Act are not commonly used for self-defense; by design and in practice, they exist for offensive infliction of mass casualties,\u201d the brief states.<\/p>\n

It also argues the term \u201carms\u201d refers to weapons and not \u201caccessories,\u201d and that large capacity magazines are therefore not protected under the Second Amendment\u2019s right to bear arms.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The Supreme Court has already stated that arms that are in common use\u00a0today\u00a0<\/em>are protected by the Second Amendment, not just those arms that were around at the time the Bill of Rights was ratified. In\u00a0Caetano v. Massachusetts<\/em><\/a>\u00a0, a unanimous Supreme Court ruled that stun guns and other electronic weapons fall under the scope of the Second Amendment, pointing out that in\u00a0Heller\u00a0<\/em>the justices determined that \u201cthe Second Amendment extends, prima facie, to all instruments that constitute bearable arms, even those that were not in existence at the time of the founding.\u201d<\/p>\n

Note that the Supreme Court specifically referred to \u201cbearable arms\u201d, which negates Pritzker\u2019s hamhanded comparison of missile launchers to AR-15s. But if the courts were to accept Raoul\u2019s argument, then what\u2019s stopping them from concluding that\u00a0all\u00a0<\/em>semi-automatic firearms, including handguns, fall outside the Second Amendment\u2019s protections? We may soon find out, because based on the makeup of the Seventh Circuit panel that recently heard oral arguments in the Illinois gun ban cases I\u2019m not all that optimistic that the appeals court will follow Supreme Court precedent and the\u00a0Bruen\u00a0<\/em>test to their logical conclusions; modern sporting rifles are indeed in common use for a variety of lawful purposes, and are therefore covered by the Second Amendment\u2019s guarantee of our right to keep and bear arms.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Pritzker compares AR-15s to “missile launchers” while calling for a federal ban Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker seems to be channeling his inner Joe Biden in his defense of the state\u2019s ban on so-called assault weapons and \u201clarge capacity\u201d magazines. Biden has famously (and erroneously) proclaimed that while the Second Amendment may protect muskets, it never … Continue reading “”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[95,71,8,74],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-94154","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mendacity","category-propaganda-o-the-day","category-rkba","category-scratch-a-lib-find-a-tyrant"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94154","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=94154"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94154\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":94155,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94154\/revisions\/94155"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=94154"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=94154"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=94154"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}