BLUF
\nPost-Bruen, just as what happened after\u00a0Heller, many federal courts are trying to stymie the obvious results of the Supreme Court\u2019s Second Amendment decisions. A continued effort by Second Amendment advocates will be required to ensure proper enforcement of these landmark rulings.<\/p>\n
Seventh Circuit Strains to Uphold Illinois\u2019 Gun and Magazine Ban<\/a><\/p>\n At this point, gun owners and\u00a0other productive Americans<\/a>\u00a0don\u2019t<\/a>\u00a0anticipate much good news out of Chicago. On November 3, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit lived up to those expectations when it upheld Illinois\u2019 ban on commonly-owned semi-automatic firearms in\u00a0Herrera v. Raoul<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n This may have seemed like an open-and-shut case to some who follow Second Amendment jurisprudence.<\/strong><\/p>\n In 2008, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Second Amendment protects ownership of arms \u201cin common use\u201d for lawful purposes. In case there was any confusion about what \u201carms\u201d that might entail,\u00a0Heller<\/em>\u00a0decision author Justice Antonin Scalia cleared that up in 2015 when he signed onto a dissent from the denial of certiorari in\u00a0Friedman v. Highland Park<\/em>. In the dissent, Justice Clarence Thomas explained,<\/p>\n Roughly five million Americans own AR-style semiautomatic rifles. The overwhelming majority of citizens who own and use such rifles do so for lawful purposes, including self-defense and target shooting. Under our precedents, that is all that is needed for citizens to have a right under the Second Amendment to keep such weapons.<\/strong><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Commonly-owned semi-automatic firearms have only become more common since\u00a0Heller<\/em>\u00a0and the Highland Park case. In 2022, the National Shooting Sports Foundation (the firearm industry trade association) estimated that since 1990\u00a0more than 24 million<\/a>\u00a0modern sporting rifles (their term for commonly-owned semi-automatic rifles) have entered circulation in the U.S. A 2023 Washington Post poll found that \u201c6 percent of Americans own an AR-15, about 1 in 20.\u201d Given compelling research finding that\u00a0polling systematically undercounts the number of gun owners in the U.S.<\/a>, that number may be far higher.<\/p>\n The standard capacity firearm magazines Illinois prohibits are not just common, but ubiquitous. Many of the most popular handguns and rifles in America are designed to use magazines with a capacity greater than 10 rounds. Americans own hundreds of millions of firearm magazines with a capacity greater than ten rounds.<\/p>\n If\u00a0Heller<\/em>\u00a0weren\u2019t enough, in 2022 the U.S. Supreme Court decided\u00a0New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen<\/em>. Justice Clarence Thomas\u2019s opinion made clear that in order for a firearm regulation to pass constitutional muster it must fit within the text, history, and tradition of the Second Amendment right. As the dissent in the present case noted, \u201c\u2019in common use\u2019 is a sufficient condition for finding arms protected under the history and tradition test in Bruen.\u201d However, for a firearm restriction to be permissible it must meet that further burden.<\/p>\n Specifically, the\u00a0Bruen<\/em>\u00a0opinion explained,<\/p>\n [w]hen the Second Amendment\u2019s plain text covers an individual\u2019s conduct, the Constitution presumptively protects that conduct. The government must then justify its regulation by demonstrating that it is consistent with the Nation\u2019s historical tradition of firearm regulation. Only then may a court conclude that the individual\u2019s conduct falls outside the Second Amendment\u2019s \u201cunqualified command.\u201d<\/strong><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Given that the concept of an \u201cassault weapons\u201d ban targeting semi-automatic long guns came about in the 1980s only after gun control advocates failed to ban their preferred target (handguns), such prohibitions have no place in the American tradition.<\/p>\n To uphold the Illinois ban, the Seventh Circuit set about contending that the AR-15 falls outside the definition of \u201cbearable arms\u201d discussed and protected in\u00a0Heller<\/em>. According to the Judge Diane Wood,<\/strong><\/p>\n the definition of \u201cbearable Arms\u201d extends only to weapons in common use for a lawful purpose. That lawful purpose, as we have said several times, is at its core the right to individual self-defense.<\/strong><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Wood contended that firearms that are prominent in military purposes fall outside this definition and are therefore not arms covered by the Second Amendment. Wood then claimed that the AR-15, despite its solely semi-automatic function, resembles the fully-automatic military M16 sufficiently for it to also fall outside the Second Amendment\u2019s protection.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Perhaps understanding just how flimsy this argument is, given the AR-15 and M16\u2019s completely different fire control function, Wood then shared at length her concern about the potential that an individual may illegally modify an AR-15 to fire automatically and into something akin to the M16, and that this would also place it outside the scope of the Second Amendment.<\/p>\n Little space was given to explaining why the state\u2019s standard-capacity magazine ban is permissible.<\/p>\n Wood\u2019s emphasis on a firearm\u2019s potential military application as justifying a ban is bizarre and concerning. First, the American tradition is replete with examples of the\u00a0military<\/a>\u00a0adopting\u00a0civilian<\/a>\u00a0firearm technology for its use and civilians adopting what was once primarily military firearm technology for lawful purposes including self-defense. Gun owners understand that what makes a firearm useful for a variety of lawful civilian purposes may also make it useful to the military, and vice versa. The military\u2019s use of a particular type of technology shouldn\u2019t remove that technology from Second Amendment protection.<\/p>\n Second, under Wood\u2019s rubric, it\u2019s not just the technology that the military uses that enjoys no Second Amendment protection. Firearms that resemble or are within some other undefined proximity to technology the military uses could be banned as well. How far does that proximity extend? A cynic could be forgiven for thinking it would largely depend on the technological ignorance and political proclivities of the judge and their clerks.<\/p>\n Also consider Wood\u2019s contention that the purported potential to illegally modify an AR-15 into a prohibited machinegun, resembling an M16, removes it from the Second Amendment\u2019s protection. In part of her opinion, Wood approvingly quoted a passage from\u00a0Heller<\/em>\u00a0that states,<\/p>\n the Second Amendment does not protect those weapons not typically possessed by law-abiding citizens for lawful purposes, such as short-barreled shotguns.<\/strong><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Any common shotgun can be modified to a short-barreled shotgun with a hacksaw. Does that mean shotguns aren\u2019t protected by the Second Amendment because a person could modify one into a firearm that doesn\u2019t receive Second Amendment protection (under the Court\u2019s current case law)? Wood\u2019s AR-15 logic invites this absurd result.<\/p>\n Post-Bruen, just as what happened after\u00a0Heller<\/em>, many federal courts are trying to stymie the obvious results of the Supreme Court\u2019s Second Amendment decisions. A continued effort by Second Amendment advocates will be required to ensure proper enforcement of these landmark rulings.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" BLUF Post-Bruen, just as what happened after\u00a0Heller, many federal courts are trying to stymie the obvious results of the Supreme Court\u2019s Second Amendment decisions. A continued effort by Second Amendment advocates will be required to ensure proper enforcement of these landmark rulings. Seventh Circuit Strains to Uphold Illinois\u2019 Gun and Magazine Ban At this point, … 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":[10,23,9,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-97878","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-corruption","category-courts","category-enemies-foreign-domestic","category-rkba"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97878","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=97878"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97878\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":97879,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97878\/revisions\/97879"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=97878"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=97878"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=97878"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}