Illinois Supreme Court expedites rifle ban case, while Naperville shop owner files his own appeal

SPRINGFIELD - The Illinois Supreme Court agreed this week to fast-track, starting in May, the state's appeal of a Macon County judge's ruling against parts of a recently passed state ban on high-powered weapons and high-capacity magazines.

Then on Tuesday, a Naperville gun shop owner filed his appeal of a federal judge's ruling to allow the city of Naperville and the state to continue their weapons bans.

Passage of the law prompted immediate legal challenges in both state and federal courts by gun rights advocates who said it violated both the Illinois and U.S. Constitutions.

One of those suits was filed by a group of plaintiffs led by state Rep. Dan Caulkins, a Decatur Republican.

On March 3, Judge Rodney S. Forbes ruled that the exceptions to the weapons ban violate the equal protection clause in the Illinois Constitution as well as the "special legislation" clause that prohibits the General Assembly from passing "a special or local law when a general law can be made applicable."

That decision, the judge wrote, was based on a 5th District Court of Appeals ruling in another case in which an Effingham County judge had granted a temporary restraining order to block enforcement of the ban. That order, however, applied only to the roughly 800 plaintiffs who were named in that case, Accuracy Firearms LLC v. Pritzker, which also has been appealed to the state Supreme Court.

"We look forward to vigorously defending this final judgment by Judge Forbes," Caulkins said at a news conference Wednesday. "We believe that we have the facts on our side."

Oral arguments in the Caulkins case will be heard sometime in May.

Lawmakers passed the ban during a January session before new legislators were sworn in, and Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed it into law almost immediately. The law came in response to numerous mass shootings in the United States, including the Fourth of July parade shooting in Highland Park that killed seven people and injuring dozens of others last summer.

The new law bans the sale and manufacture of a long list of firearms defined as "assault weapons," assault weapon attachments, .50-caliber rifles and .50-caliber cartridges, as well as large-capacity magazines.

The law allows people who already own such items to keep them, but it restricts their ability to sell or transfer them to someone else. And it requires current owners of such weapons to register them with the Illinois State Police by Jan. 1, 2024.

The law also exempts certain people from the ban, including current and retired law enforcement officers, prison wardens, members of the military while they are performing official duties or traveling to or from their places of duty, and companies that employ armed security guards at federally supervised nuclear sites.

Although the Accuracy Firearms case went through an appellate court before reaching the Supreme Court, Attorney General Kwame Raoul appealed the Caulkins case directly to the high court.

In both cases, Raoul filed motions for an expedited hearing schedule. But on Tuesday, the court chose to take only one, accepting the Caulkins case and denying the motion in the Accuracy Firearms case.

Meanwhile, a Naperville gun shop owner has taken his effort to halt the weapon bans in both Naperville and the state to a federal appeals court.

Robert Bevis, who owns Law Weapons and Supply, asked the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Tuesday for an injunction blocking the state law, the Chicago Sun-Times reported. And he asked that it apply to everyone affected by the law.

Bevis and the National Association for Gun Rights had sued city of Naperville and Police Chief Jason Arres. The Naperville ordinance was slated to go into effect on Jan. 1, but city officials delayed enforcement until Kendall issued her ruling, which she did Feb. 17.

The Naperville City Council passed an ordinance last August prohibiting the sale of certain high-powered rifles within city limits to anyone except for law enforcement officers and members of the military, including the Illinois National Guard.

Kendall ruled that "because assault weapons are particularly dangerous weapons … their regulation accords with history and tradition."

Bevis' lawyers argue that Kendall's ruling is wrong, that, under previous Supreme Court rulings, weapons must be found to be "dangerous and unusual" to be banned, the Sun-Times reported.

"An arm that is commonly possessed by law-abiding citizens for lawful purposes is, by definition, not unusual," they wrote in their court filing Tuesday. "Thus, such an arm cannot be both dangerous and unusual and therefore it cannot be subjected to a categorical ban."

It's unclear how quickly the appeals court might rule.