Supreme Court lets stand Chicago-area assault weapons ban

7 not to hear the appeal of Highland Park pediatrician Arie Friedman and the Illinois State Rifle Association challenging the city’s constitutionality of the ban that could lead to it being overturned, according to a Supreme Court spokesperson. The NRA and 24 US states urged the Court to hear the case brought forth by a Highland Park resident and the Illinois State Rifle Association, according to Reuters.

Highland Park cited shootings in Aurora, Colorado and at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in CT for prohibiting the semiautomatic weapons. More generally, it prohibited possession of what it called assault weapons, defining them as semi-automatic guns that can accept large-capacity magazines and have features like a grip for the nontrigger hand. Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas dissented in the decision not to hear the case.

They argued that more than a quarter of the United States population lives in area that have similar assault weapons bans, including large states such as California and New York, and municipalities including New York City, San Francisco and Cook County Illinois. A nationwide assault weapons ban law limiting magazines to holding no more than 10 rounds of ammunition expired in 2004.

“The millions of Americans who use such “assault weapons” use them for the same lawful purposes as any other type of lawful firearm: hunting, recreational shooting and self-defense”, they argued in court papers.

“If a ban on semi-automatic guns and large-capacity magazines reduces the perceived risk from a mass shooting and makes the public feel safer as a result, that’s a substantial benefit”, Judge Frank Easterbrook, who was appointed to the appeals court by President Ronald Reagan, wrote. Federal courts have upheld those restrictions.

By leaving a suburban Chicago gun control law intact, the court gave a boost to efforts aimed at imposing such bans elsewhere, at a time of renewed interest in gun regulation after recent mass shootings.

Gun rights advocates praised the decision, and their foes anxious that it would undermine laws across the country.

“The Court’s refusal to review a decision that flouts two of our Second Amendment precedents stands in marked contrast to the Court’s willingness to summarily reverse courts that disregard our other constitutional decisions”, Thomas said. The term “assault weapons”, they told the justices, “is an imaginary and pejorative category”.

Friedman filed an appeal with the high court in July, which won the backing of the National Rifle Assn. and the state attorneys from 23 mostly Republican-led states.

The Supreme Court decision was on par with several prior decisions.

In the 2008 District of Columbia v. Heller case, the court held for the first time that the Second Amendment guaranteed an individual right to bear arms, but the ruling applied only to firearms kept in the home for self-defense.

California’s weapons ban is riddled with loopholes, as evidenced by the legal purchase of the Smith & Wesson M&P15 assault rifles used by Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik, the San Bernardino massacre shooters.

In April, a divided three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, in Chicago, upheld the Highland Park ordinance.