From WWW.FOXNEWS.COM
The president of a gun rights group is hoping Justice Amy Coney Barrett will grant his application for an emergency injunction, which would temporarily suspend Illinois’ semi-automatic rifle and high-capacity magazine ban.
“They’re going to strike this down and send Naperville and the state of Illinois packing,” Dudley Brown, the president of one of the plaintiffs, the National Association for Gun Rights (NAGR), told Fox News.
The emergency petition for the case, National Association for Gun Rights v. City of Naperville, made it to Barrett’s desk after lower courts denied temporary restraining orders to block an Illinois law and local ordinance banning the sale of high-capacity magazines and “assault weapons.”
“We’ve been going through the process of trying to save the local gun business and get rid of these gun controls,” Brown said. “So we appealed to the U. S. Supreme Court thinking it was kind of a Hail Mary, and, in fact, Justice Amy Coney Barrett said, ‘yeah, let’s look at the arguments.’”
The U. S. Court of Appeal for the 7th Circuit is reviewing the case but joined a lower court in denying a temporary restraining order and a preliminary injunction to block the bans.
Barrett, who hears applications from the 7th Circuit, asked both sides for more information on May 1. She has the options to block the ban with an emergency injunction while the case continues in the lower court or refer the application to the full Supreme Court to vote on.
Illinois and Naperville filed their responses to Barrett’s request Monday, while NAGR responded Wednesday.
The Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, which is representing Naperville and its Chief of Police Jason Arres, declined to comment on the specifics of the case, but provided a statement from its president, Kris Brown, about semi-automatic rifles.
“Mass shootings involving assault weapons are becoming increasingly regular in the U. S., and they’re horrifying reminders of why these weapons were designed for the battlefield, not our communities,” she said. “Weapons of war have no place in our communities and every day we wait to renew the Assault Weapons Ban, more lives will be lost.”
A spokesperson for Attorney General Kwame Raoul, Annie Thompson, told Fox News that Illinois’ top prosecutor “has defended the constitutionality of the Protect Illinois Communities Act in courts around Illinois, and we are committed to continuing to defend the law’s constitutionality.”
Naperville, a Chicago suburb, issued an ordinance banning the sale of “assault weapons” within city limits after a Highland Park gunman fired into a crowd on July 4, 2022, wounding 48 people and killing seven.
Illinois followed on Jan. 10, 2023, passing legislation banning the sale, purchase, manufacture, delivery and importation of “assault weapons,” and large capacity magazines, with exceptions for law enforcement, military members and certain other professionals with firearm training. The Protect Illinois Communities Act specifically named the AR-15 and AK-47 rifles and requires lawful owners of semi-automatic rifles to register their ownership with state police.
The defendants argued that the injunction request should be rejected because it’s not an emergency and sidesteps the conventional appellate process…. (Read more)
