* The 7th Circuit Court of Appeals just upheld the state ban on assault weapons and large-capacity magazines…

In 2023, six months after a mass shooting at a Chicago suburb’s Independence Day parade left seven dead and dozens more wounded, Illinois enacted the Protect Illinois Communities Act. Among other things, the Act criminalizes the manufacture, sale, delivery, purchase, and possession of assault weapons and large-capacity magazines. A grandfather clause permits preexisting lawful own- ers of the regulated items to continue possessing them.

Plaintiffs across Illinois swiftly challenged the Act, suing state and local officials for declaratory and injunctive relief protecting their right to keep and bear arms. One federal court granted a preliminary injunction, two did not, and all three losing parties appealed. We consolidated their appeals and held in Bevis v. City of Naperville, 85 F.4th 1175 (7th Cir. 2023), that the plaintiffs were unlikely to succeed on the merits of their challenges

One of the consolidated cases in Bevis was Barnett v. Raoul, which itself was the lead case for a set of four similar challenges pending in the Southern District of Illinois. After building out the record following Bevis, the Barnett parties proceeded to a bench trial. In the end, the district court held that much of the Act violated the Second Amendment and that the offending provisions were not severable. The court therefore enjoined enforcement of the Act in its entirety. The defendants appealed.

For reasons that follow, we focus on the Act’s application to AR-15s and thirty-round rifle magazines. The Act’s restrictions on these items, we hold, are consistent with the principles that underpin our Nation’s tradition of firearm regulation. Whether to adopt them is thus a decision reposed in our elected representatives, and we reverse.

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