Illinois State Rifle Association confident in gun ban challenge

(The Center Square) – Plaintiffs challenging Illinois’ gun and magazine ban are telling the federal appeals court a district judge was correct to find the law violates Second Amendment rights.

The four plaintiffs groups from the Southern District of Illinois consolidated cases filed their lawsuits weeks after the state enacted the ban in January 2023. On initial proceedings, the case went up and down the judiciary.

After a four-day bench trial on the merits last year, a federal judge found the law unconstitutional. The state filed their appeal and the Seventh Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals started accepting filings last month.

The state said the ban is prohibiting dangerous firearms and addressing unprecedented societal concerns over mass shootings.

Illinois State Rifle Association’s Richard Pearson said that argument won’t hold up.

“You can’t take the right away of 105 or 120 million people because of an incident. You could take driver’s licenses away from all the people because there are many more car accidents and there are shootings. But that doesn’t work out,” Pearson told The Center Square. “But this is a fundamental right. So you can’t take a fundamental right, because of criminal activities.”

ISRA is part of one of the four lawsuits consolidated in the Southern Districts.

A recent U.S. Supreme Court decision to not take a Maryland gun ban challenge acknowledged AR-15s are commonly owned. Pearson said gun rights will win eventually in the U.S. Supreme Court.

“I actually think that they’re waiting for the Illinois case,” Pearson said. “And the reason they’re waiting for the Illinois case is there’s so much more documentation in that case than there was in the Maryland case. So when the Supreme Court makes a decision, they want to be on solid ground. And so we have something like 10,000 pages of documentation supporting us in this case.”

The bench trial produced thousands of pages of documentation and testimony leading an Illinois federal judge to find the law unconstitutional. It’s now up to an appeals court.

“So that whatever side wins or whatever side loses, it doesn’t matter how you look at it, I guess, the other side will appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, no question,” Pearson said.

Plaintiffs groups suing the state filed their briefs in the appeals court Friday. The state files their final briefs later this month. Oral arguments have yet to be scheduled.