Justice Amy Coney Barrett received the filing on Wednesday.
Opponents of Illinois’s “assault weapons” ban filed an emergency petition with the U.S. Supreme Court on Nov. 29, asking the justices to block a Democrat-backed ban on certain kinds of semiautomatic rifles and magazines.
The National Association for Gun Rights, firearms store owner Robert Bevis, and his store, Law Weapons & Supply, filed the “emergency application” after a lower court denied their bid for a preliminary injunction against the statewide ban, as well as a similar ban enacted by the Chicago suburb of Naperville.
Justice Amy Coney Barrett handles emergency petitions from Illinois; in May, she rebuffed an earlier petition that challenged the state ban. At the time, the Supreme Court offered no comment and no justice publicly dissented.
In January, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker enacted a ban on more than 170 semiautomatic firearms, which he and other Democrats term “assault weapons,” as well as magazines that have a certain capacity. The law, in part, requires grandfathered firearms to be registered with the state policy by Jan. 1, 2024, and owners who don’t comply may face criminal penalties.
The Chicago-based 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Nov. 3 ruled against Mr. Bevis and the National Association for Gun Rights, finding that the bans were likely lawful in part and argued that the Constitution’s Second Amendment applies to weapons meant for individual self-defense, not the military. In its ruling, the court claimed that semiautomatic firearms and certain magazines “are much more like machine guns and military-grade weaponry than they are like the many different types of firearms that are used for individual self-defense.”
Responding to the 7th Circuit’s decision this month, the petitioners wrote that the order “rests on a foundation of stealth interest balancing” and added that it essentially “held that the government may restrict citizens access to certain weapons that are ‘especially dangerous’ or ‘militaristic’ in character.” However, the petition suggested that the court failed to elaborate on how those weapons are “especially dangerous” or “militaristic.”
