(TheRedAlertNews.com) – The National Rifle Association and other gun rights activists have filed a lawsuit against a newly adopted Illinois law banning semiautomatic weapons.
The NRA and the other plaintiffs argue that the new legislation violates Americans’ rights under the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
The disputed Illinois law was signed on January 10 by the state’s Democrat Governor, J.B. Pritzker.
It was adopted as a reaction to the mass shooting, which killed seven and injured 30 people during last year’s Fourth of July parade in Chicago’s Highland Park suburb.
The new legislation bans multiple rapid-fire pistols, long guns, and high-capacity magazines and attachments in Illinois.
The Second Amendment lawsuit against the law was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Illinois, CBS News reported, as cited by Newsmax.
The lead plaintiffs are two gun owners from Benton, Illinois. Besides the NRA, they are joined by two gun dealers, shooting range operators from the state, and a shooting sports trade association from Connecticut.
“[The Illinois law] takes the radical step of banning nearly every modern semiautomatic rifle — the single-most popular type of rifle in the country, possessed by Americans in the tens of millions,” the NRA-backed lawsuit states.
It refers to the 2008 U.S. Supreme Court decision in District of Columbia v. Heller, which rejects restrictions on “weapons that are in common use” unless there is evidence of an “enduring American tradition” of restriction.
Meanwhile, a judge in the conservative Effingham County, Illinois, temporarily blocked the new state law arguing it violated the state constitution. The ruling infuriated Governor Pritzker.
“There’s always some place to go among 102 counties in Illinois to bring a case with a judge whose political future might rest on the decision that he or she makes. It was poorly decided, and it will be overturned. I’m very confident of that,” the governor told CBS.
Dozens of Illinois county sheriffs have reacted to the ban banning semiautomatic weapons by declaring they would not enforce it.
“Part of my duties that I accepted upon being sworn into office was to protect the rights 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 Second Amendment,” Edwards County Sheriff Darby Boewe wrote on Facebook.
Illinois’ Democrat governor attacked Boewe and other like-minded sheriffs as a negligible minority in the state’s law enforcement.
“You don’t get to choose what laws you enforce when you are in law enforcement. You have to enforce the laws whether you like them or not. You take an oath to do that. And these sheriffs have taken that oath,” Pritzker argued in his interview.
What is your opinion? Are you support the NRA’s decision to file a lawsuit to protect gun rights? Why or why not? Please share your thoughts and views by emailing [email protected]. Thank you.
