Authored by Aldgra Fredly via The Epoch Times,
A federal appeals court on July 9 upheld Illinois’s ban on the sale and possession of “assault weapons” and large capacity magazines, overturning a lower court ruling that had blocked enforcement of the law.
Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker signed the Protect Illinois Communities Act into law in January 2023 after a gunman killed seven people in a 2022 shooting during an Independence Day parade in suburban Chicago. A federal judge overturned the law in 2024, finding it violated the Second Amendment right to bear arms, but the injunction was later stayed after the state appealed.
In a 2–1 decision on July 9, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit concluded that the state’s ban is “consistent with the principles that underpin our nation’s tradition of firearm regulation.”
“In short, legislatures have long imposed restrictions on particularly dangerous weapons, and the Act is but another chapter in that story,” the order stated.
The appeals court said that semiautomatic rifles are rarely used for self-defense, citing an analysis that found handguns accounted for the majority of defensive gun uses.
Circuit Judge Michael Brennan dissented, saying the Illinois law contradicts the nation’s regulatory traditions that “forbid governments from prohibiting
