(CN) — A federal judge in southern Illinois permanently blocked enforcement of the state’s assault weapon ban Friday afternoon, following a bench trial on multiple consolidated suits against the ban this September.
The ban — as codified in the 2023 Protect Illinois Communities Act — survived multiple challenges at the state and federal level before U.S. District Judge Stephen McGlynn, a Donald Trump appointee, ruled it unconstitutional on Friday. Anticipating his decision would be appealed to the Seventh Circuit, McGlynn issued a monthlong stay of his sweeping injunction.
“PICA is an unconstitutional affront to the Second Amendment and must be enjoined. The government may not deprive law-abiding citizens of their guaranteed right to self-defense as a means of offense. The court will stay enforcement of the permanent injunction for a period of 30 days from the date of this order,” the Republican judge writes in his order.
McGlynn’s ruling is only the latest development in a complicated legal saga over the state assault weapon ban going back nearly two years.
Illinois lawmakers first passed the assault weapon ban, as well as a ban on high-capacity ammo magazines, in January 2023. Public pressure to outlaw assault weapons built in the aftermath of the July 4, 2022 Highland Park mass shooting, which suspected gunman Robert Crimo III carried out using legally-purchased guns.
In the 168-page order, McGlynn openly criticizes “depriving citizens of a principal means to defend themselves and their property in situations where a handgun or shotgun alone would not be the citizen’s preferred arm,” in a paragraph where he claims property crimes are increasing nationally.
The judge cites an October 2023 Associated Press story which reports a 7.1% rise in property crimes nationwide in 2022 compared to 2021 to support his claim.
FBI data finds the overall national property crime rate decreased 2.4% in 2023. National property crime rates have fallen by more than 50% since the early 1990s, according to federal data.
Elsewhere, McGlynn references the East St. Louis Massacre of 1917 — when white mobs attacked Black laborers and residents in the city, killing dozens and injuring hundreds more — to support his conclusion that “disarming law-abiding citizens does not also bring about happy endings.”
“Sadly, there are those who seek to usher in a sort of post-Constitution era where the citizens’ individual rights are only as important as they are convenient to a ruling class,” he wrote.
McGlynn also noted that conservative justices of the U.S. Supreme Court — while declining to weigh in on the state bans on multiple occasions — have voiced criticism of the Protect Illinois Communities Act and the Seventh Circuit’s decision to leave it in place.
“It is difficult to see how the Seventh Circuit could have concluded that the most widely owned semiautomatic rifles are not ‘Arms’ protected by the Second Amendment,” Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in a statement this past July, which McGlynn quotes in his own ruling.
McGlynn also cited opposition to the bans by the The Illinois Sheriffs’ Association and most Illinois sheriffs’ offices as a reason to enjoin the act.
Multiple Illinois sheriffs issued statements in early 2023 refusing to enforce the bans, and did not recant their positions in January when the law took full effect. The Illinois Sheriffs’ Association filed an amicus brief in this case arguing the act was unconstitutional.
“Therefore, it stands to reason that PICA can and will be enforced arbitrarily,” McGlynn wrote.
The bans prohibit, with some exceptions, the sale and purchase of high-powered firearms deemed “assault weapons” by the Illinois legislature, as well as magazines with a capacity of more than 10 rounds for long guns and more than 15 rounds for hand guns. The bans took full effect until on New Years Day 2024, and prohibit ownership of the offending weapons and magazines.
People who already owned assault weapons and extended magazines were able to legally keep them past the start of this year, so long as they bought the weapons before Democratic Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker signed the bans into law, and registered their guns with the state. Illinoisans found in possession of unregistered assault weapon or extended magazine are subject to felony charges under the law — a policy McGlynn said the state could not enforce.
Challenges to the bans began materializing only days after Pritzker signed the Protect Illinois Communities Act, and since then judicial opinion on the issue has been split between the liberal Chicagoland area and more conservative regions in the state’s south and west.
McGlynn’s Friday ruling, delivered from East St. Louis, reiterates the injunction he placed on the Protect Illinois Communities Act and its bans in April 2023.
It came three days after U.S. District Judge Lindsay Jenkins, a Joe Biden-appointed federal judge in Chicago, issued a separate order rejecting a bid to enjoin the bans. The Seventh Circuit heard oral arguments on multiple consolidated cases challenging the bans in June 2023, with the appellate panel as divided over the issue as the district courts.
The Seventh Circuit nevertheless decided last November to leave the bans in place, a decision McGlynn’s ruling Friday effectively overturns. It similarly upends an August 2023 ruling to uphold the bans from the Illinois Supreme Court.
The office of Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul, who is named as a defendant in the suit, did not respond to Courthouse News’ request for comment on McGlynn’s ruling. But the governor’s office said it anticipated Raoul’s office “filing an immediate appeal.”
“Despite those who value weapons of war more than public safety, this law was enacted to and has protected Illinoisans from the constant fear of being gunned down in places where they ought to feel secure,” a spokesperson for Pritzker’s office told Courthouse News in an email. “We look forward to the attorney general filing an immediate appeal and the governor is confident the constitutionality of the Protect Illinois Communities Act will be upheld through this process.”