{"id":97457,"date":"2023-11-04T10:18:05","date_gmt":"2023-11-04T15:18:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=97457"},"modified":"2023-11-04T10:18:05","modified_gmt":"2023-11-04T15:18:05","slug":"97457","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=97457","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

While this is pretty much nothing more than the 7th poking their finger in the eye of SCOTUS, the sooner this gets to there, so we know what the words of the 2nd amendment mean to the courts, and thus to law,<\/span> the better.<\/p>\n

Seventh Circuit Overturns Injunction Against Illinois “Assault Weapons Ban”, Says AR-15s Aren’t Protected Arms<\/a><\/p>\n

On the face of it, Friday\u2019s decision by the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals to overturn an injunction against enforcement of Illinois\u2019 recently enacted ban on \u201cassault weapons\u201d and \u201clarge capacity\u201d magazines doesn\u2019t change circumstances on the ground. The three-judge panel that issued today\u2019s decision had previously stayed U.S. District Judge Stephen McGlynn\u2019s injunction while the state appealed, so the law has been in effect throughout litigation.<\/p>\n

Still, the 2-1 decision does matter, both because it provides an opportunity for some or all of the plaintiffs to appeal on an emergency basis to the Supreme Court and because it will undoubtedly be cited by other anti-gun judges around the country, including those on the Ninth Circuit panel hearing the appeal of Judge Roger Benitez\u2019s decision striking down California\u2019s ban on \u201cassault weapons.\u201d<\/p>\n

I won\u2019t have a chance to do a deep dive into\u00a0the opinion<\/a>\u00a0until this weekend, but one thing immediately stuck out to me as I was giving a quick look-over. The three-judge panel concluded that AR-15s (and presumably semi-automatic rifles in general) are not protected by the Second Amendment because they\u2019re too close to machine guns:<\/p>\n

Coming directly to the question whether the weapons and feeding devices covered by the challenged legislation enjoy Second Amendment protection, at the first step of the Bruen analysis, we conclude that the answer is no. <\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

We come to this conclusion because these assault weapons and high-capacity magazines are much more like machineguns and military grade weaponry than they are like the many different types of firearms that are used for individual self-defense (or so the legislature was entitled to conclude).\u00a0<\/em>Indeed, the AR-15 is almost the same gun as the M16 machinegun. The only meaningful distinction, as we already have noted, is that the AR-15 has only semiautomatic capability (unless the user takes advantage of some simple modifications that essentially make it fully automatic), while the M16 operates both ways<\/em>.\u00a0<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Both weapons share the same core design, and both rely on the same patented operating system.<\/span><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

If the distinction between semi-automatic and select fire is enough to render modern sporting rifles outside the scope of the Second Amendment, according to the Seventh Circuit, then what does that mean for semi-automatic\u00a0handguns<\/em>? Are they too close to machine guns to be protected as well? Note this passage from the majority opinion:<\/p>\n

The similarity between the AR-15 and the M16 only increases when we take into account how easy it is to modify the AR-15 by adding a \u201cbump stock\u201d (as the shooter in the 2017 Las Vegas event had done) or auto-sear to it, thereby making it, in essence, a fully automatic weapon.<\/strong><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

You can (illegally) attach an auto-sear or a switch to many semi-automatic handguns as well. Is the Seventh Circuit suggesting that the most popular make of handguns, undoubtedly in common use for lawful purposes, is also beyond the Second Amendment\u2019s protection?<\/p>\n

It sure sounds like it to me, though the panel didn\u2019t have to address that issue since the state hasn\u2019t attempted to ban the majority of semi-automatic pistols, only a subset it deems to be \u201cassault weapons\u201d. This is actually something that gun control activists have been arguing for a couple of years now, both in civil litigation and in lobbying the Biden administration to\u00a0reclassify many semi-automatic firearms<\/a>\u00a0as machine guns under the National Firearms Act.<\/p>\n

If the Seventh Circuit\u2019s twisted logic is adopted or allowed to stand by the Supreme Court, not only would the most popular style of rifle be implicated, but the vast majority of handguns that are in the hands of lawful gun owners across the country as well. The 2-1 decision is bad enough, but the long term implications will be even worse unless and until SCOTUS makes it clear that the Seventh Circuit got it wrong.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

While this is pretty much nothing more than the 7th poking their finger in the eye of SCOTUS, the sooner this gets to there, so we know what the words of the 2nd amendment mean to the courts, and thus to law, the better. Seventh Circuit Overturns Injunction Against Illinois “Assault Weapons Ban”, Says AR-15s … 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":[23,11,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-97457","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-courts","category-crap-for-brains","category-rkba"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97457","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=97457"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97457\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":97458,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97457\/revisions\/97458"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=97457"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=97457"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=97457"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}