Supreme Court will not hear challenge to assault weapons ban in IL

A majority of the Supreme Court today allowed that 7th Circuit decision to survive.

Advocates of the bans on military-style weapons had pointed to mass shootings before this year and argued these rapid-fire rifles and handguns posed a special danger to public safety.

Semi-automatic weapons are capable of shooting a single round with each pull of the trigger and, consequently, can fire rapidly. Highland Park also outlawed large-capacity magazines. The 7th Circuit Court of Appeals, based in Chicago, did the same in a 2-1 decision in April.

The justices gave no reason for turning down the appeal after months of reviewing the case, but their decision was likely not affected by recent mass shootings, SCOTUS blog reporter Lyle Denniston contends.

In an unusual step, Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas voiced opposition to the Court’s move.

According to the New York Times, the plaintiffs urged the Supreme Court to address what they called “the lower courts’ massive resistance to Heller and their refusal to treat Second Amendment rights as deserving respect equal to other constitutional rights”.

Gun rights advocates say cities and states continue to put unreasonable restrictions on the constitutional right.

That was the situation on Monday, when Thomas and Scalia filed a dissent saying a federal appeals court decision that allowed the Highland Park bans to survive “eviscerates numerous protections” the court had outlined in its 2008 and 2010 decisions. The AR-15, the group said, is the best-selling rifle type in the nation. Had it been heard and the ordinance struck down as a result, the decision would have likely voided all the state laws as well.

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. Anxiety about stiffer federal gun control, however, hasn’t been matched by action: Even after the Newtown, Conn., elementary school massacre in December 2012, congressional Republicans have thwarted Democratic attempts to enact such restrictions as universal background checks.

“These weapons are disproportionately used in crime, and particularly in criminal mass shootings”, the court said.

“Less than a decade ago, we explained that an ordinance requiring firearms in the home to be kept inoperable, without an exception for self-defense, conflicted with the Second Amendment because it ‘made it impossible for citizens to use (their firearms) for the core lawful goal of self-defense, ‘ ” Thomas wrote.

Still, the Supreme Court has upheld the No Fly List.

While City Attorney Steven M. Elrod supervised the original litigation defense strategy, the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence secured the Perkins Coie law firm to represent the city for free. The Constitution grants you the right to bear arms, which means you have a right to nearly any weapon you’d want, in as great a quantity as you want, and you should be able to take that weapon anywhere you want.