Bevis v. City of Naperville, Illinois

Several plaintiffs (individuals and gun-rights organizations) filed challenges in different District Courts to ban on certain assault weapons and high capacity magazines in Protect Illinois Communities Act, as well as in Cook County, City of Chicago and City of Naperville ordinances, where said challenges were based on claims that said bans violated Second Amendment plaintiffs’ right to “keep and bear Arms.” Certain District Courts granted plaintiffs’ request for issuance of preliminary injunction to bar enforcements of said Act and ordinances, while other District Courts denied said requests. Ct. of Appeals, though, in finding that AR-15s and other semi-automatic firearms covered by said Act and ordinances were either too akin to military-use firearms or too akin to other weapons not possessed for lawful purpose such as machine guns, such that said firearms were not “bearable Arms” for purposes of Second Amendment. As such, according to Ct. of Appeals, there was nothing under Second Amendment to prohibit defendants’ regulation of said firearms and high capacity magazines, and thus it affirmed the denial of plaintiff’s requests for preliminary injunction in certain District Court judgments and vacated the granting of said requests in other District Court judgments. Ct. of Appeals also emphasized that plaintiffs might ultimately prevail should record be more developed to show that firearms/ high capacity magazines at issue in Act and ordinances not be sufficiently comparable to military-use weapons or other weapons that are not possessed for lawful purposes. (Dissent filed.)