On Friday, the Illinois Supreme Court upheld the state’s ban on “assault weapons” and “high capacity” magazines.
Governor J.B. Pritzker (D) signed the ban into law on January 10th, and lawsuits were promptly initiated against it.
U.S. District Stephen P. McGlynn issued a preliminary injunction against the ban on April 28, noting in his opinion that there are already plenty of gun laws on the books and those laws need to be enforced.
On May 4th, the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit halted McGlynn’s preliminary injunction and is currently reviewing the case that was presented before the lower court.
However, Illinois state Rep. Dan Caulkins (R) brought his own case — Caulkins v. Pritzker — arguing that the “assault weapons” ban was unconstitutional, and it was in his case that the Illinois Supreme Court ruled in favor of the ban.
Caulkins’ case made it to the Illinois Supreme Court after a court in Macon County heard it and decided against the “assault weapons” ban.
The Illinois Supreme Court reversed the Macon County decision.
Judge Elizabeth Rochford wrote the majority opinion for the Illinois Supreme Court, and the Chicago Sun-Times reported that Rochford was one of two candidates Pritzker supported for court in order to “preserve a 5-2 Democrat majority.”
In the majority opinion, Rochford focused on trained professionals and opined that average Firearm Owner’s Identification (FOID) card holders are not trained professionals, and therefore not prepared to use guns categorized as “assault weapons.”
When plaintiffs described themselves as both FOID card holders and “law-abiding gun owners,” Rochford responded:
“A FOID card holder does not have a duty to maintain public order; to make arrests for offenses; or to prevent, detect, investigate, prosecute, or incarcerate a person for a violation of law. By contrast, each of the seven categories of trained professionals must undergo specialized firearms training pertaining to their employment to maintain their exempt status under the Act.”
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Another pointless and useless law but it is a step towards dismantling our Constitution. Nice work Supreme Court – if you had wanted to do something meaningful and useful, you’d have reinstated all your police – long ago or, not defunded them in the first place. Only idiots and the mentally deranged thought that was a good idea but thinking it through, one would realize THAT opened the door to Marshall Law giving the ‘government’ control on a street level. Just more of what we DON’T need.
All sorts of counter lawsuits were filed as soon as the unconstitutional decision was announced. In the meantime, the criminals will have more freedom to change the name of the weekly program to Saturday Nights Dead, only it won’t just be Saturday nights. Bu the police will be ordered not to report most of them, DAs will dismiss charged on anything that gets past the police, and Big Butt Pritzker will be able to claim that crime is down.