Justice Amy Coney Barrett of the U.S. Supreme Court intervened and requested a response from an Illinois municipality after gun rights advocates sued over a recently enacted moratorium on certain firearms.

The city of Naperville, Illinois, passed an ordinance similar to a state law enacted this year that prohibits the sale and possession of certain semi-automatic rifles and magazines.

Barrett, who oversees appeals from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit, informed the officials of Naperville that they have until May 8 at noon to respond.

The National Association for Gun Rights and the National Foundation for Gun Rights argued that the law conflicts with the Supreme Court’s decision last year in NYSRPA v. Bruen, which held that gun laws must be consistent with the text and history of the Constitution.

“We’re thankful the Supreme Court is taking the Second Amendment rights of Illinoisans seriously,” Dudley Brown, President of NAGR, told the Washington Examiner. “Any ban on so-called ‘assault weapons’ is plainly unconstitutional, and now it is on the city of Naperville to explain the legal justification for their ban. Of course, there isn’t any. The bans were ludicrous from the start, and if Illinois had any sense, they would wave the white flag now and save us all some time.”

“This is an exceedingly simple case. The Second Amendment protects arms that are commonly possessed by law-abiding citizens for lawful purposes, especially self-defense in the home,” the plaintiffs wrote in their emergency application.

“The arms banned by Respondents are possessed by millions of law-abiding citizens for lawful purposes, including self-defense in the home. Under this Court’s precedents, ‘that is all that is needed for citizens to have a right under the Second Amendment to keep such weapons’” the plaintiffs continued. “There cannot be the slightest question, therefore, that the challenged laws are unconstitutional.”

“The challenged laws are unconstitutional because ‘[w]hen the Second Amendment’s plain text covers an individual’s conduct, the Constitution presumptively protects that conduct.’ Plaintiffs desire to keep and bear for lawful purposes (including defense of their homes) the semi-automatic firearms and firearm magazines banned by the challenged laws,” they wrote.

As noted by renowned legal scholar Jonathan Turley, the case Bevis v. Naperville and the State of Illinois also involves the following crucial issue:

Can the government prohibit the sale, purchase, and possession of certain semi-automatic firearms and firearm magazines, tens of millions of which are owned for lawful purposes by law-abiding Americans, in the absence of a comparable historical prohibition, as required by D.C. v. Heller (2008)?Bruen v. New York State Rifle & Pistol Association (2022).

When Barrett was being considered for confirmation, I remarked that the Second Amendment could be one of her most intriguing areas of legacy law. As an appellate justice, her dissent in Kanter v. Barr was a powerful defense of Second Amendment rights. Rickey Kanter was found guilty of one count of felony mail fraud for Medicare fraud involving therapeutic shoe inserts. Barrett addressed the voting rights and jury service issue with a crucial distinction, focusing on the “history and tradition” of such limitations.

“The problem with this argument is that virtue exclusions are associated with civic rights—individual rights that “require citizens to act collectively for clearly public purposes.” Individuals possess the right to vote, but they do not exercise it for their own benefit alone; rather, they vote as part of the collective enterprise of self-governance. Similarly, individuals do not serve on juries for their own benefit; rather, they do so as part of the larger enterprise of administering justice.

Turley continued his report by saying:

However, Heller rejects categorically the argument that the Second Amendment safeguards a strictly civic right. 2012, Seventh Circuit, 702 F.3d 933, 935, Moore v. Madigan. It affirms unequivocally that “the Second Amendment confers an individual right to keep and bear arms,” Heller, 554 U.S. at 595, 128 S.Ct. 2783 (emphasis added), and it emphasizes that the Second Amendment is rooted in the individual’s right to defend himself, and not in his right to serve in a well-regulated militia.”

More on this story via Conservative Brief:

In this case, we are dealing with a direct ban on certain weapons that are loosely characterized as “assault weapons.” CONTINUE READING…