Background
In June 2023, six months after the Highland Park mass shooting, Illinois enacted the Protect Illinois Communities Act, which criminalizes the manufacture, sale, delivery, purchase, and possession of assault weapons (including AR-15s) and large-capacity ammunition magazines (defined as those holding more than ten rounds for rifles). The Act includes a grandfather clause allowing preexisting lawful owners to retain their weapons through a free registration process completed by January 1, 2024.
Four plaintiffs—individuals, firearm dealers, and Second Amendment advocacy organizations—filed consolidated lawsuits in the Southern District of Illinois challenging the Act as violating the Second Amendment under the Supreme Court’s framework in New York State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n v. Bruen (2022). Following a preliminary injunction stage where the Seventh Circuit’s decision in Bevis v. City of Naperville (2023) found plaintiffs unlikely to succeed on the merits, the parties developed a full record and proceeded to a bench trial. The district court held that the Act’s restrictions violated the Second Amendment and were not severable, enjoining enforcement of the Act in its entirety. Defendants appealed.
The Court’s Holding
The Seventh Circuit reversed and upheld the Act’s constitutionality. The court applied the two-step test from Bruen: (1) whether the Second Amendment’s plain text covers the regulated conduct; and (2) whether the regulation is consistent with the nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation. Assuming without deciding that AR-15s and thirty-round magazines are protected “Arms,” the court focused on step two and held that the Act’s restrictions are entirely consistent with America’s historical tradition of regulating particularly dangerous weapons.
The court emphasized that other circuits have unanimously agreed with this conclusion. It traced a historical pattern of regulations from pre-Founding going-armed laws through Reconstruction-era restrictions on Bowie knives to twentieth-century machine gun bans—all imposing targeted restrictions on weapons of exceptional danger and lethality. The court used Bowie knife regulations as a leading example: although these knives were widespread and commonly used for lawful self-defense and hunting, they were restricted because of their particular dangerousness. By analogy, legislatures may restrict AR-15s and large-capacity magazines based on their capacity for unprecedented lethality, even if commonly possessed for lawful purposes.
The court rejected the plaintiffs’ facial challenge, noting that it failed to address all regulated items (such as grenade launchers and belt-fed weapons) and that facial challenges are disfavored. The court proceeded to evaluate only the AR-15 and thirty-round magazine restrictions—the focus of the parties’ briefing and record development—and found those constitutional without resolving the constitutionality of pistols, shotguns, and other regulated items.
Key Takeaways
- The Second Amendment permits states to restrict weapons viewed as particularly dangerous and of unprecedented lethality, consistent with historical tradition going back centuries.
- Under Bruen’s framework, the government need not find close founding-era comparators for modern firearm regulations; historical analogues need only be “relevantly similar” in how and why they restricted weapons.
- All six circuits to address the issue have upheld state assault weapon and large-capacity magazine bans, creating strong circuit consensus on constitutionality.
- Facial constitutional challenges impose a demanding burden requiring challengers to show no circumstances exist under which a law is valid; such challenges rarely succeed.
Why It Matters
This decision is the first appellate review of an assault weapon ban following the Supreme Court’s landmark Bruen decision, and it establishes that such bans are consistent with the Second Amendment when grounded in the historical tradition of regulating dangerous weapons. The Seventh Circuit’s reasoning provides a roadmap for upholding similar weapons restrictions in other jurisdictions and resolves potential circuit splits by joining the unanimous consensus among circuits that have addressed the question. For practitioners, the opinion clarifies that Bruen’s historical tradition test need not require exact founding-era parallels and that targeted restrictions on particularly dangerous weapons fall within a well-established regulatory tradition.
The decision is also significant for states seeking to regulate firearms in response to mass shootings. By upholding Illinois’ Act as a reasonable exercise of legislative judgment about weapons of exceptional danger, the court rejects the argument that modern assault weapons receive categorical Second Amendment protection simply because they are in common use, instead permitting legislatures discretion to determine which weapons pose unacceptable risks. This reinforces that the Second Amendment right, while fundamental, remains subject to regulation consistent with historical tradition.