Judge argues that Democrat-backed law “obliterated” the rights of the people to defend themselves by banning hundreds of different types of firearms.
Posted BY: Jamie White
A federal judge temporarily blocked a bill banning so-called “assault weapons” in Illinois on Friday, arguing those filing lawsuits against the state for violating their Second Amendment rights have a strong case.
U.S. District Judge Stephen McGlynn issued a preliminary injunction against Democrat Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s Protect Illinois Communities Act (PICA), which bans the sale of semiautomatic rifles and high-capacity magazines.
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Judge McGlynn argued PICA “obliterated” the rights of the people to defend themselves by banning hundreds of different types of firearms.
“While PICA was purportedly enacted in response to the Highland Park shooting, it does not appear that the legislature considered an
individual’s right under the Second Amendment nor Supreme Court precedent,” he wrote.
“Moreover, PICA did not just regulate the rights of the people to defend themselves; it restricted that right, and in some cases, completely obliterated that right by criminalizing the purchase and the sale of more than 190 ‘arms.’”
He also noted that plaintiffs suing the state for claiming the law violates their Second Amendment have a “reasonable likelihood” of winning their cases.
In addition to banning many semiautomatic firearms, PICA also requires citizens to register their existing semiautomatic rifles with the government.
“The new law also requires existing owners of semi-automatic rifles to register their ownership, ensuring that law enforcement knows the location of these weapons of war and who to hold accountable if they fall into the wrong hands,” Pritzker’s office said in a statement after the governor signed the bill into law in January.
Sheriffs in over 80 Illinois counties vowed not to enforce the gun ban, calling it a “clear violation” of the Second Amendment.
Edwards County Sheriff Darby Boewe had released the following statement after the bill was signed into law:
Part of my duties that I accepted upon being sworn into office was to protect the rights provided to all of us, in the Constitution. One of those rights enumerated is the right of the people to KEEP and BEAR ARMS provided under the 2nd Amendment. The right to keep and bear arms for defense of life, liberty and property is regarded as an inalienable right by the people.
This whole business about the so-called Bill of Rights – as the first ten Amendments to the Constitution have been widely termed – needs to be reviewed in depth, and beyond precedent. Example: The First Amendment says that “Congress shall make no law respecting” such-and-such. It does not say that ‘No State shall make any law respecting’ such-and-such. And take the Fifth Amendment; which says: “No person shall be…nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law…” But it wasn’t until the 14th Amendment, in the wake of the Civil War, that that right applied from the FEDERAL government TO the STATES: “No State shall…nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law…” And the Tenth Amendment summarizes the matter: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” Meaning, obviously, that a) the (new) federal government was to be one of LIMITED and DELEGATED powers – “few and defined,” in the rather authoritative words of the man fairly called the Father of the Constitution, James Madison; that b) the (new) federal government was to deal primarily with international and interstate matters. All other matters were left up to the (still) sovereign States to deal with, to be dealt with – under the rule of law – via their respective State constitutions. Thus, abortion is rightly a domestic matter for the States to decide upon, respectively. So – why are not all of the other matters which are commented on in the first ten amendments, as simply EXAMPLES of rights and powers not being ceded to the (new) federal government to have any jurisdiction over, in the new Constitution, as summarized in the Tenth Amendment thereto??
A bit of legal legerdemain has been applied to the 14th Amendment, to try to say that all of the examples of rights and powers as mentioned in the first ten amendments were, quote, ‘incorporated’ in the sentiment of the 14th Amendment. as now and henceforth to apply from the federal government to the States. But that is fallacious. The 14th deals with a few specific subjects; it was and is not a wholesale turning of the Constitution around and about. But it has been made to seem that way. That ‘seem’ needs to be corrected. Just as the precedent of Roe v. Wade was corrected, rightly.