Monday was the deadline for the defendants of the consolidated cases challenging Illinois’ new firearm and magazine bans to file their briefs with the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed the new law into effect on January 10th of this year. How did that go?
Well the state’s attorneys submitted outright lies and falsehoods to the court. How can they do that without sanction? Folks, there isn’t enough bourbon in the world to read through their briefs without getting a serious headache.
Keep in mind that the new law that’s being challenged via more than a dozen lawsuits in both state and federal courts has limited the ability of good people in Illinois to get the most popular and most effective firearms for self-defense. Meanwhile, gang members use modified, full-auto guns to shoot up other people on a daily basis.
So while Chicago continues to see the toll of horrific violence pile up, let’s start with the city’s 91-page brief.
Assault weapons and high-capacity magazines are also dangerous and
unusual. The AR-15 rifles Herrera wishes to keep in his home are no different from
M-16 rifles, which may be banned.
Oh really? The AR platform rifle is America’s favorite and has become the hottest selling rifle in the nation. That makes it not only “usual” but, in fact, it makes it “the MOST usual.” Americans own about 25 million of them and counting.
Dangerous? Misusing them is dangerous, just as when fire, water, gasoline or electricity are dangerous when misused.
AR-15s were originally developed for military use, and the civilian versions in circulation today are, if anything, even deadlier than those used on the battlefield.
Please.
Did the city’s legal team buy up the entire stock of THC-infused gummy bears to snack on while they wrote this?
And because of the dramatic technological changes and unprecedented societal concerns about mass shootings using assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, the City can address these public safety concerns only through banning these dangerous instruments.
That’s an interesting take. Unfortunately, Bruen says, “No, you can’t.” More from the city’s attorneys . . .
Assault weapons and high-capacity magazines are instruments of war. In
the hands of civilians, they enable perpetrators of mass shootings to unleash
horrific carnage, pose a grave threat to law enforcement officers, instill terror in
citizens, disrupt public life, undermine democracy, and impose significant economic
and social costs on communities and municipal governments.
If these rifles are actually instruments of war, why does the city issue them to its police officers? After all, police officers are civilians, too.
Chicago’s defense team goes on to twist themselves into a legal pretzel, trying to 1) rewrite Heller to say that only guns in common use for self-defense are covered by the Second Amendment, 2) government can restrict or suspend fundamental Constitutional rights because of “public interest” (meaning none of your rights are safe from government overreach), and 3) don’t believe your lyin’ eyes: America’s favorite rifle is both dangerous and unusual, kind of like the highly unusual F-150 pickup truck…which the AR-15 outnumbers across America.
If I had to sum up Chicago’s pleading, I’d start with “Once upon a time…” and file it in the Fiction section. Frankly, it has little basis at all in reality.
But that’s the city. Then there is the state (Team Kwame Raoul) and their 131-pages of make-believe.
Deputy Solicitor General Sarah Hunger and her pal, Assistant Attorney General Ivan Parfenoff did their best to defend the legal trainwreck otherwise known as the Protect Illinois Communities Act. In short, it has fallen on their shoulders to defend the indefensible for their boss.
Give them props for trying to do the moral, ethical, and intellectual equivalent of justifying racial segregation after the famous Brown v. Board of Education ruling that ended racial segregation in American schools.
At least their work product didn’t read like a bunch of stoned high school kids in shop class wrote it as the city of Chicago’s brief did . . .
Plaintiffs are not entitled to preliminary injunctive relief. To begin, plaintiffs
failed to show that they are likely to succeed on the merits of their Second
Amendment claim under Bruen’s two-step test, which directs courts to first assess
whether the regulated conduct is within the Second Amendment’s text and then, if
necessary, whether the challenged regulation is consistent with the country’s
historical tradition of regulating firearms.
Raoul’s team is trying their darnedest to pretend things don’t exist when they really do as opposed to Team Chicago who just made up their own “facts” like claiming the AR-15 is just like the M-16.
Clearly, bans on firearms commonly owned for lawful purposes isn’t an exception written into the Second Amendment. Most of the rest of Team Raoul’s 131 pages is more of the same until they get to the part about lobbying for the court to take a “more nuanced” approach to the historical analysis.
the record shows that a “more nuanced approach” to the historical inquiry is appropriate here
Here we go. “A more nuanced approach,” run through the universal translator, means the state of Illinois thinks it’s time to restore the discredited two-step, interest-balancing test where government can restrict your rights “for the greater good.”
Team Raoul goes on and on in scores of pages, willfully ignoring reality and pretending it doesn’t exist. If I had to summarize the their filing with a single word, I’d opt for “gaslighting.”
Finally, we get to Cook County’s 92-page brief. Otherwise known as Team Foxx, as in Kim Foxx the Soros-funded Cook County State’s Attorney who doesn’t bother to prosecute gang bangers who shoot it out with and murder one another. She’s another “top of her class” legal mind occupying public office.
Team Foxx spends page after page claiming that the banned guns are so awful that we must suspend the right of people to own them. What do they offer for a historical analogue for their gun ban?
…it is analogous to the longstanding regulations on gunpowder enacted in
England centuries ago.
Sweet Baby Jesus. Did they actually put this in a briefing for the United States Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals?
Did the legal beagles in Kim Foxx’s office ask their elementary school-age children to brainstorm “historical analogues” for them? Dear Lord, make it stop.
Given the extraordinary lethality of assault weapons, such weapons are
patently incompatible with basic principles of moderate self-defense. Such weapons
are very powerful and effective at a long range, meaning they are more likely to
travel easily through walls, vehicles, body armor, and the human body, regardless
of whether the shooter intends to do so.Given the effective range of assault weapons when compared to the population density of Cook County, there are few, if any, places where one could safely discharge them without knowingly or unknowingly endangering the bodily safety of a third party.
Reduced to a fine point, firing a weapon that has the capacity to pierce body
armor at 500 yards, equipped with a large-capacity magazine or
not, within densely populated Cook County, is excessive force, and not self-defense,
and thus a crime.
Apparently, every time a police officer in Cook County uses an AR-style patrol rifle they’re committing a crime.
Back to the gun powder regulations: Team Foxx claims that regulations on gun powder in England as a “historical analogue” to banning America’s favorite rifle. They go on for pages and pages trying to make that paper mache puppy hunt when it won’t even stand up.
But the piece de resistance is found on page 48:
III. Bruen Does Not Abrogate This Court’s Decisions in Friedman and
Wilson.
Those are the rulings upholding the Highland Park and Cook County “assault weapons” bans. Bruen turned both into dead-letter law. No, Bruen didn’t mention them specifically, but the faulty foundation upon which they were built was liquified and pulverized by the Bruen ruling.
Describing Team Foxx’s work in a single word or phrase? “Childlike.”
So there you have it. Chicago’s filing is gaslighting. Team Raoul’s filing is make-believe and Team Foxx’s filing is childlike.
That sums up close to 300 pages of taxpayer-funded grasping at straws to defend the indefensible. Our June 29th court date for oral arguments can’t come quickly enough.