Background
In 2023, six months after a mass shooting at an Independence Day parade in Highland Park, Illinois killed seven people and wounded dozens more, Illinois enacted the Protect Illinois Communities Act. The Act criminalized the manufacture, sale, delivery, purchase, and possession of assault weapons—defined to include AR-15s—and large-capacity magazines holding more than ten rounds for rifles. The law included a grandfather clause allowing preexisting lawful owners to register and retain these items.
Four consolidated cases challenged the Act in the Southern District of Illinois, with Barnett v. Raoul as the lead case. After the Seventh Circuit vacated preliminary injunctions in an earlier decision (Bevis v. City of Naperville), the parties developed a full record. The district court held that the Act violated the Second Amendment and enjoined its enforcement entirely, finding that AR-15s and large-capacity magazines are commonly used for self-defense and thus presumptively protected under the Supreme Court’s decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n v. Bruen, 597 U.S. 1 (2022).
The Court’s Holding
The Seventh Circuit reversed the district court’s injunction, holding that the Act’s restrictions on AR-15s and thirty-round rifle magazines are consistent with the nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation and therefore constitutional under Bruen’s second step. The court applied Bruen’s two-step framework: first, whether the Second Amendment’s plain text covers the conduct at issue, and second, whether the regulation aligns with the nation’s historical firearm regulation tradition.
Assuming that AR-15s and large-capacity magazines are protected “Arms” under Bruen’s first step, the court focused on whether the Act satisfies the historical tradition prong. The court found a robust tradition spanning from pre-Founding going-armed laws through modern machine gun bans, where legislatures consistently restricted weapons deemed particularly dangerous or capable of unusual lethality. The court emphasized that Bruen does not require “close founding-era comparators” for every modern regulation, particularly after the Supreme Court’s recent clarification in Rahimi. The court highlighted nineteenth-century regulations of Bowie knives—weapons widely used for lawful self-defense but subject to targeted restrictions—as exemplifying this tradition of regulating particularly dangerous arms.
The court also noted that all six federal circuits to address assault weapons and large-capacity magazine bans have upheld them, creating unanimous circuit consensus. The court declined to create a circuit split under these circumstances, reasoning that the Act falls squarely within the historical tradition of selective restrictions on weapons perceived as exceptionally dangerous.
Key Takeaways
- The Bruen framework permits bans on modern firearms—including semiautomatic AR-15s—when consistent with historical traditions of regulating particularly dangerous weapons.
- Differences between modern weapons and their military counterparts (e.g., AR-15s being semiautomatic versus military M16s being automatic) do not necessarily place modern arms outside the scope of historical regulations.
- Unanimous federal circuit consensus supporting assault weapons and large-capacity magazine bans suggests these restrictions survive Second Amendment scrutiny across the country.
- The historical tradition of firearm regulation is sufficiently broad and consistent to support the Act’s targeted restrictions without requiring precise founding-era analogues.
Why It Matters
This decision represents the first federal appellate affirmance of a post-Bruen assault weapons ban and provides significant guidance on how courts should apply Bruen’s historical tradition test. Despite the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision in Bruen potentially expanding Second Amendment protections, the Seventh Circuit’s decision confirms that modern firearm restrictions can satisfy the historical tradition prong, particularly when targeting weapons perceived as especially dangerous. The unanimous circuit consensus across all six circuits that have addressed the issue suggests that assault weapons and large-capacity magazine restrictions are on stable constitutional ground.
The decision carries particular importance for Illinois, where the Protect Illinois Communities Act had been enjoined, and for the broader constitutional landscape of gun regulation. It signals that states retain substantial authority to regulate military-style firearms and high-capacity ammunition devices under the Second Amendment, even after Bruen. The court’s reliance on longstanding traditions of selective weapon regulation—rather than requiring exact founding-era matches—provides a workable framework for upholding modern regulations that address contemporary weapons concerns.