Officials in a Chicago suburb got a stinging rebuke when a circuit judge blocked enforcement of their attempted ban on "assault" rifles by handing down a temporary injunction.
A private citizen and three pro-Second Amendment groups filed suit against the city of Deerfield, Illinois, in spring after its city council approved an ordinance prohibiting certain weapons. The judge issued his ruling June 12.
From the National Review:
The judge on Tuesday granted a temporary injunction against the Chicago suburb preventing enforcement of the law, which would have levied fines of up to $1,000 per day on residents who failed to turn over banned weapons, a list that includes nearly all semi-automatic rifles and a number of handguns and shotguns. The ordinance was set to go into effect Wednesday, after which residents would have been given 60 days to remove offending weapons from the city.
A number of pro-Second Amendment groups filed suit after the ban was passed in the wake of the mass shooting that claimed 17 lives in Parkland, Fla. on Valentine’s Day. The Illinois State Rifle Association, the Second Amendment Foundation, and Deerfield resident Daniel Easterday filed one challenge to the ordinance, while the NRA-backed Guns Save Lives filed another.
“This ruling is a significant victory because it allows law-abiding Deerfield residents to keep commonly owned firearms and magazines in their homes for self-defense while the case proceeds,” John Boch, executive director of Guns Save Life, said in a statement. “We are gratified by the court’s decision and the careful attention to the law that it reflects.”
The suit filed by the Second Amendment Foundation claims that the ordinance violates an Illinois state law, passed in 2013, which prohibits localities from passing their own gun laws absent approval from the state legislature.
Alan Gottlieb, founder of the Second Amendment Foundation, told the Washington Free Beacon in a statement his organization acted quickly because the proposed ban clearly violated Illinois law.
“The village tried to disguise its extremism as an amendment to an existing ordinance," Gottlieb told the Beacon. "The ordinance bans possession of legally-owned semi-auto firearms, with no exception for guns previously owned, or any provision for self-defense. Worse, still, the ordinance also provided for confiscation and destruction of such firearms and their original capacity magazines.”
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