(ConcernedPatriot.com) – The United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, a three-judge panel, ruled on Friday that AR-15s are not protected by the Second Amendment, overturning an injunction against Illinois’ “assault weapons” prohibition.
In the case of Barnett v. Raoul, U.S. District Judge Stephen P. McGlynn—a nominee of Donald Trump—issued the preliminary injunction.
The Seventh Circuit heard an appeal of McGlynn’s ruling and rendered a 2 to 1 verdict against the injunction.
The three judges were Michael P. Brennan, appointed by Donald Trump; Diane P. Wood, appointed by Bill Clinton; and Frank Easterbook, appointed by Ronald Reagan.
The majority on the tribunal that overturned the injunction was made up of Easterbrook and Wood.
They cited Heller’s (2008) assertion that “the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited, like most rights.”
They continued by pointing out that the US Supreme Court determined in the Heller case that machine guns were not considered “bearable” weapons for the purposes of the Second Amendment since they might be “exclusively dedicated to military use.”
Next, Easterbrook and Wood discussed the parallels they discovered between M16s—which can fire in three-round burst mode or fully automatic—and AR-15s. 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 added that both weapons “deliver the same kinetic energy” and employ the same ammo.
Judge Brennan dissented from the majority ruling, arguing that the Illinois “assault weapons” prohibition is unconstitutional because it lacks historical precedence in American culture and will fail if tried by Bruen (2022).
Brennan stated: “Preliminary injunctions against enforcement of the challenged laws are justified because the banned firearms and magazines warrant constitutional protection and the government parties have failed to meet their burden to show that their bans are part of the history and tradition of firearms regulation.”
The case is in the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit and is Barnett v. Raoul, No. 23-1353.
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