GUN BAN PLEADINGS: Defendants’ briefs filled with make-believe, wishful thinking, and grade-school brainstorming to defend the PICA gun & mag ban…

Dear Lord:  Please make it stop.

How can these attorneys working to defend Gov. Pritzker’s PICA Gun & Magazine Ban be allowed to submit outright lies and falsehoods to the court?  How can they do this without sanction?  Folks, there isn’t enough bourbon in the world to read these things without getting a serious headache.

Let’s start with the 91-page City of Chicago brief.

Scroll down to page 6.

Assault weapons and high-capacity magazines are also dangerous and
unusual. The AR-15 rifles Herrera wishes to keep in his home are no different from
M-16 rifles, which may be banned.

Oh really?  The AR is America’s favorite rifle because it’s the hottest selling rifle in the nation.  That makes it not only “usual” but, in fact, it makes it “the MOST usual.”

Dangerous?  Misused it’s dangerous, just as when fire, water, gasoline or electricity are misused.

AR-15s were originally developed for military
use, and the civilian versions in circulation today are, if anything, even deadlier
than those used on the battlefield. 

Even deadlier than those used on the battlefield?

Did the City of Chicago’s legal team buy up the entire stock of THC-infused gummy bears to snack upon while they wrote this?

And because of the
dramatic technological changes and unprecedented societal concerns about mass
shootings using assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, the City can address
these public safety concerns only through banning these dangerous instruments

Uh, Bruen says, “No, sweetheart.  No you can’t.”

Assault weapons and high-capacity magazines are instruments of war. In
the hands of civilians, they enable perpetrators of mass shootings to unleash
horrific carnage, pose a grave threat to law enforcement officers, instill terror in
citizens, disrupt public life, undermine democracy, and impose significant economic
and social costs on communities and municipal governments.

So why do you issue them to your police officers?  After all, police officers are civilians.

Chicago’s legal team goes on to try to twist themselves into a pretzel to: 1) rewrite Heller to say that only guns in common use for self-defense are covered by the Second Amendment, 2) that government can regulate fundamental Constitutional rights because of “public interest” (meaning none of your rights are safe from government overreach) and 3) don’t believe your lyin’ eyes: America’s favorite rifle is both dangerous and unusual.

If I had to sum up Chicago’s pleading, I’d describe it as “Once upon a time.”  Or “Fiction.”  Because frankly, it has little in common with reality.

Okay, it’s time for State Parties (Kwame Raoul):

Sarah Hunger and her buddy Ivan do their best to defend the trainwreck known as PICA.  In short, it has fallen on their shoulders to defend the indefensible for their boss Kwame the not-so-magnificent.

Give them props for trying to do the moral, ethical and intellectual equivalent of justify racial segregation after the famous Brown v. Board of Education ruling that ended racial segregation in American schools.

Right out of the gate, props to Kwame’s legal team.  While they aren’t elder statesmen and professors of law in their writings (oh hell no), at least their work product didn’t read like a bunch of stoned high school kids in shop class wrote it as was the case with the previous brief.

SUMMARY OF ARGUMENT
Plaintiffs are not entitled to preliminary injunctive relief. To begin, plaintiffs
failed to show that they are likely to succeed on the merits of their Second
Amendment claim under Bruen’s two-step test, which directs courts to first assess
whether the regulated conduct is within the Second Amendment’s text and then, if
necessary, whether the challenged regulation is consistent with the country’s
historical tradition of regulating firearms.

Really?  Kwame’s team is just trying to pretend things don’t exist when they really do as opposed to Team Chicago just making things up like “the AR-15 is just like the M-16.”

Clearly, bans on firearms commonly owned for lawful purposes is not an exception written into the 2nd Amendment.  So that take care of the first part of it.

At the first step, plaintiffs bore the burden of showing that assault weapons
and LCMs are “arms” in “common use today for self-defense.” Bruen, 142 S. Ct. at
2132, 2134 (internal quotations omitted). But plaintiffs did not satisfy that burden
for three reasons. First, LCMs are not “arms”: rather, they are accessories or
“accoutrements,” and they are unnecessary to operate firearms. Second, plaintiffs
presented no evidence demonstrating that assault weapons or LCMs are in common
use for self-defense. Third, setting plaintiffs’ lack of evidence aside, the record
shows that assault weapons and LCMs are offensive, militaristic instruments that
are not commonly used for individual self-defense.

Nothing like willfully ignoring black letter law and binding precedent, folks.  

Plaintiffs likewise cannot succeed at the second step because the historical
evidence shows that the Act’s restrictions on assault weapons and LCMs are
consistent with the country’s historical tradition of regulating firearms. Relevant
here, there is a well-established tradition pre-dating the Founding era whereby a
weapon is introduced into civilian society, proliferates to where it causes a
substantial threat to public safety, and is then regulated to curb the public harm

Really, and which states had these common bans on guns and magazines back in 1791?

We’ll wait.

the record shows that a “more nuanced
approach” to the historical inquiry is appropriate here

Oh, here we go.  “A more nuanced approach” run through the universal translator, means “time to restore the two-step, interest-balancing test” where they can restrict your rights “for the greater good.”

Team Kwame goes on and on willfully ignoring reality and pretending it doesn’t exist.  If I had to summarize the Kwame filing with a single word, I’d opt for “gaslighting.”

Finally, we get to Cook County’s 92-page brief.  Otherwise known as Team Foxx.

Team Foxx spends page after page claiming that these guns are so awful that we must suspend the right of people to own them.  Maybe they just took turns writing a paragraph or so waiting for the, ahem, large-bottomed, hand-rolled joint to make it back around to them?

What do they offer for historical analogue?

it is analogous to the longstanding regulations on gunpowder enacted in
England centuries ago.

(Emphasis added!) 

Sweet Baby Jesus.  Did they actually put this in a briefing for the United States Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals?

Did the legal beagles in Kim Foxx’s office ask their elementary school student children to brainstorm “historical analogues” for them?  Dear Lord, make it stop!

Here, the record shows beyond reasonable dispute that neither assault
weapons nor large-capacity magazines are in “widespread” or “prevalent” use for
lawful purposes.

Then why do you issue police patrol rifles to civilians working in law enforcement?  Why are they the hottest-selling rifles in America?

The extended capacity provided by large-capacity magazines is
also rarely, if ever, used in self-defense, which rarely involves lengthy shootouts
that might necessitate the excess capacity provided by such a magazine.

Really?  You want to know who else needs 30-round magazines?

Betcha the families of Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith wished those young men had AR-15s and plenty of 30-round magazines to deal with the knuckle-dragging Neanderthals who lynched them.

Hell, you try to lynch a man in my presence today and I’ll light you up like a Christmas tree.  If you look like Goofy #7 in the above photo (probably hoping to cop a feel of #9’s butt), I’ll make sure you get a triple tap to wipe that grin off your face.

Given the extraordinary lethality of assault weapons, such weapons are
patently incompatible with basic principles of moderate self-defense. Such weapons
are very powerful and effective at a long range, meaning they are more likely to
travel easily through walls, vehicles, body armor, and the human body, regardless
of whether the shooter intends to do so. SA9 at ¶9, SA11 at ¶17; R. 60-5 at 79; R. 60-
11 ¶10; R. 60-4 at ¶83. Given the effective range of assault weapons when compared
to the population density of Cook County, there are few, if any, places where one
could safely discharge them without knowingly or unknowingly endangering the
bodily safety of a third party.

Reduced to a fine point, firing a weapon that has the capacity to pierce body
armor at 500 yards, R. 60-4 ¶¶44, 103, equipped with a large-capacity magazine or
not, within densely populated Cook County, is excessive force, and not self-defense,
and thus a crime. See, e.g., People v. Murillo, 587 N.E. 2d 1199, 1204 (1st Dist.
1992) (finding that self-defense was no longer a defense and became excessive force
when shooting a person multiple times, including while the person no longer posed
a threat). 

Once more, does this mean that police officers who use ARs in the course of their duties are using excessive force and as such committing a crime?

Back to the gun powder regulations:  Team Foxx claims that outlier rules and regulations on gunpowder is the equivalent of banning guns and magazines.  For pages and pages they try to make that paper mache puppy hunt when it won’t even stand up.

But the piece de resistance is found on page 48:

III. Bruen Does Not Abrogate This Court’s Decisions in Friedman and
Wilson.

I allllmost sprayed my sip of Bulleit when I read that.  

Hey, Sugarbritches.  Abrogate?  Bruen turned them into dead letter law.  It didn’t mention them specifically, but the faulty foundation upon which they were built was liquified and pulverized.

Look for Todd Vandermyde to offer a similar analysis of these over at Freedom’s Steel.

Don’t lose a lot of sleep over this.

I know that from interacting with scores of active gun owners in multiple cities across Illinois, folks are worried.  They’re already thinking about worst-case scenarios including whether or not to rehome some guns or even contemplate registering them.

Folks, take a deep breath.  There’s plenty of time for that later.  For now, keep yourself informed and engaged.

Something you can do today to feel better is to file a formal complaint on the new IL Supreme Court justices who took millions from named defendants in this high-profile, politically-sensitive case and then refused to recuse themselves.

Let’s see how arguments go on June 29th and then let’s look at the decision the 7th Circuit hands down.  Wait until the appeals run their course.

Lastly, you can contribute to the legal defense funds:

We recently received this letter in the mail: In an upcoming issue of GunNews, would you please list names and addresses of organizations you endorse that will be fighting this ban? Thank you.

To pay our Illinois litigation team:
FFLIL.org
Federal Firearms Licensees of Illinois, Inc.
1905 Marketview Dr. Suite 116
Yorkville, IL 60560
(note: this one is not tax deductible.)

SADEC.org
ASC’s Second Am.Defense and Education Coalition (SADEC)
P.O. Box 300
Waterman, IL 60556
(this one is tax deductible)

For Michel & Associates, the national firm backstopping our IL team:
2ALC.org
Second Amendment Law Center
284C East Lake Mead Parkway
Suite 530
Henderson NV 89015
(this one is tax deductible)

You can send money to us for the legal fight, but we would prefer folks send it directly to the groups already acting as formal clearinghouses for donations. The easiest way for everyone involved is to make the donations online, but we’ve included mail addresses here for the non-computer savvy.

Editor’s note:  Finally, a big thank you to those who have donated analysis fuel in the form of Bulleit Bourbon to my stash.  It’s gone to a good cause.  This includes John, Ken, Mary and a couple of anonymous contributors.  Yes even the kind person who sent this:

Todd, as in “In Todd We Trust,” loves his Jack.  John loves his Bulleit, especially to cope with the headaches of reading inane, and insane legal pleadings.