Key Takeaways
- NSSF will petition the U.S. Supreme Court in Barnett v. Raoul to challenge Illinois’s rifle ban, emphasizing that it is a named plaintiff.
- The Seventh Circuit’s recent decision reversed a ruling declaring the Protect Illinois Communities Act unconstitutional under the Second Amendment.
- NSSF argues that over 32 million Modern Sporting Rifles exist in circulation, asserting they cannot be banned as they are commonly used for lawful purposes.
- Additionally, NSSF claims the panel misapplied the Bruen test by incorrectly referencing historical knife carry restrictions as analogous to a rifle possession ban.
- The cert petition is significant as it provides the Supreme Court a comprehensive trial record, potentially influencing their decision on state bans of popular rifles.
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WASHINGTON, D.C. — The firearm industry is not letting the Seventh Circuit have the last word on Illinois’s rifle ban.
NSSF, The Firearm Industry Trade Association, announced Thursday that it will file a petition for certiorari with the U.S. Supreme Court in Barnett v. Raoul. That matters because NSSF is not just commenting from the sidelines. The trade association is a named plaintiff in the case, standing alongside Caleb Barnett, two Illinois gun stores, and the individual plaintiffs who challenged the Protect Illinois Communities Act from the day it was signed.
I covered the Seventh Circuit’s 2-1 decision last week. The panel reversed Judge Stephen McGlynn’s ruling that PICA violates the Second Amendment, a ruling McGlynn issued only after a four-day bench trial and a 160-page opinion. That trial record is what makes this case different from every other assault weapon ban challenge in the country, and it is what makes NSSF’s cert petition significant.
In its statement, NSSF said it “respectfully disagrees” with the panel’s decision and attacked the majority’s reasoning on two fronts.
First, the numbers. NSSF points to more than 32 million Modern Sporting Rifles in circulation, citing its own production figures, plus hundreds of millions of standard-capacity magazines owned by law-abiding Americans. By nearly any measure, these rifles are commonly owned and commonly used. Under Heller, that should end the analysis. A government cannot ban arms in common use for lawful purposes.
Second, the history. NSSF argues the panel misapplied the Bruen test by leaning on a handful of Bowie knife carry restrictions that are, in the association’s words, “in no way analogous” to a flat possession ban. Those knife laws also came after the founding and after the Fourteenth Amendment’s ratification, which is exactly the kind of late-arriving historical evidence Bruen warned courts against treating as founding-era tradition.
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NSSF also endorsed Chief Judge Michael Brennan’s dissent in the strongest terms. Brennan wrote that with perhaps the most comprehensive trial record in any Second Amendment case to date, the Seventh Circuit repeated its Bevis error, and that because the American people have overwhelmingly chosen the AR-15 and its magazine, those arms are protected.
Here is why the cert petition matters strategically. The Supreme Court granted review in Viramontes v. Cook County and Grant v. Higgins on June 30, and those cases will be argued next term. But both arrived at the Court without the factual record Barnett carries. A Barnett petition gives the justices the option to consolidate, to hold the case pending the outcome, or simply to have the full trial record in front of them while they decide whether states can ban America’s most popular rifle. Either way, the industry’s trade association just guaranteed that the Seventh Circuit’s decision will not be the final judgment on PICA.
NSSF is confident that Heller and Bruen plainly vindicate these challenges. After reading the trial record McGlynn built, I think that confidence is well placed.
I’ll keep tracking the Barnett cert petition along with Viramontes and Grant as the Supreme Court’s next term approaches.
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