On Friday, a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit overturned an injunction against Illinois’ “assault weapons” ban, deciding that AR-15s are not protected by the Second Amendment.
The preliminary injunction was issued in Barnett v. Raoul by U.S. District Judge Stephen P. McGlynn, a Donald Trump appointee.
Easterbrook and Wood constituted the panel majority in overturning the injunction. They noted that Heller (2008) held, “[l]ike most rights, the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited.”
Easterbrook and Wood then focused on similarities they found between AR-15s and M16s, the latter of which can be fired in full-auto or three-round burst modes. They wrote:
The similarity between the AR-15 and the M16 only increases when we take into account how easy it is to modify the AR-15 by adding a “bump stock” (as the shooter in the 2017 Las Vegas event had done) or auto-sear to it, thereby making it, in essence, a fully automatic weapon. In a decision addressing a ban on bump stocks enacted by the Maryland legislature, another federal court found that bump-stock devices enable “rates of fire between 400 to 800 rounds per minute.”
They also noted that both guns use the same ammunition and “deliver the same kinetic energy.”
Judge Brennan dissented from the majority decision, stressing that the Illinois “assault weapons” ban fails if tested by Bruen (2022) because the ban has no historical precedent in American tradition.
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