A federal appeals court ruled to keep an Illinois state-wide “assault weapons” ban intact by denying a business owner who said the ban violates the U.S. Constitution’s 2nd Amendment.
The Chicago-based Seventh U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Tuesday denied a request (pdf) for an emergency injunction by Robert Bevis, a gun store owner in Naperville, to block the ban while it considers his case. He is appealing an earlier ruling by U.S. District Judge Virginia Kendall issued (pdf) earlier this year.
Bevis filed a petition for the emergency injunction in March and asked the 7th Circuit to block the ban for himself and others who might be impacted by the law, signed by Democrat Gov. J.B. Pritzker earlier this year. The bill banned a number of weapons and magazines that hold more than 10 rounds, while requiring that anyone who owns such a gun register it with the Illinois State Police.
The legislation to ban such weapons was introduced in January, coming months after a shooting at a Fourth of July parade in Highland Park that left seven dead and dozens more injured. No motive was established by law enforcement in the mass shooting, and police later arrested a suspect in the case, Robert Eugene Crimo III.
Bevis’s lawyers have wrote that his business, Law Weapons & Supply, had suffered because of the ban. His store also may have to close down due to the new law, they wrote.
“The challenged laws ban arms commonly possessed by law-abiding citizens for lawful purposes. Heller’s central holding is that a categorical ban on arms held by law-abiding citizens is unconstitutional,” his lawyers wrote to the appeals court last month, referring to the Supreme Court’s 2008 ruling on District of Columbia v. Heller in which the high court found that a District of Columbia law regulating gun ownership to be unconstitutional.
