By Dave Workman
Editor-in-Chief
The Second Amendment Foundation and two other gun rights organizations have petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court for certiorari in a challenge of the Illinois state ban on so-called “assault weapons,” arguing that semiautomatic rifles are commonly owned and, under the Heller ruling, a ban is “off the table.”
SAF is joined by the Illinois State Rifle Association, Firearms Policy Coalition, Inc., C4 Gun Store, LLC, Marengo Guns, Inc., and a private citizen, Dane Harrel. They are represented by attorneys David Thompson, Peter Patterson, and Will Bergstrom of Cooper & Kirk, PLLC and David Sigale in Wheaton, Ill. The case is known as Harrel v. Raoul.
In their motion, SAF attorneys note, “The principles established by Heller and confirmed by Bruen resolve this case. The semiautomatic firearms and the ammunition magazines banned by Illinois are owned by tens of millions of Americans across the country for lawful purposes including self-defense, hunting, and range training. It follows that banning them is ‘off the table.’ The matter is that simple.”
“Clearly,” said SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan Gottlieb, “the Illinois gun and magazine bans are unconstitutional under principles set down in the 2008 Heller ruling and the 2022 Bruen decision. In both of those opinions, the high court said the Second Amendment protects firearms in common use. It is indisputable that modern semiautomatic rifles and magazines holding more than ten cartridges are in common use by tens of millions of U.S. citizens.”
The petition encourages the high court to “grant certiorari now to cure the irreparable harm that is being inflicted on Petitioners through the violation of their fundamental rights, spare the parties and the judicial system of the needless time and expense of building a record on irrelevant matters, and once again confirm that the common use test established by Heller and reaffirmed in Bruen governs the resolution of arms ban cases.”
“Unfortunately, it has become apparent that it likely will take this Court’s review for the clear teaching of Heller to take hold in the lower courts, and this case presents a perfect opportunity for the Court to settle the matter once and for all,” the petition states.
“The questions here are simple and straightforward,” explained SAF Executive Director Adam Kraut. “Does the U.S. Constitution allow the government to prohibit law-abiding, responsible, peaceable citizens from protecting themselves, their families and homes with semiautomatic firearms that are in common use? Does the same Constitution allow the government to prohibit those same citizens from using commonly-owned magazines for such protective purposes? Pending similar actions in other jurisdictions make it paramount that the Supreme Court accept this case for review, as the lower courts continue to ignore the Court’s edict.”
The court document also takes a poke at the origin of the term “assault weapon.”
“Labeling them ‘assault weapons’ is nothing more than an argument advanced by a political slogan in the guise of a definition,” the document says. “As even anti-gun partisans have admitted, ‘assault weapon’ is a political term designed to exploit ‘the public’s confusion over fully automatic machine guns versus semi-automatic assault weapons.’”
The quote is attributed to one of the country’s leading gun control advocates in 1988.
