The Naperville gun store owner was pushed into a corner when Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed the “assault weapons” ban on Jan. 10, 2023. Bevis last week asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit to issue an injunction against the ban.
According to Pritzker’s office, the ban goes beyond the sale of weapons wrongly classified as semiautomatic.
“The new law also requires existing owners of semiautomatic rifles to register their ownership ensuring that law enforcement knows the location of these weapons of war and who to hold accountable if they fall into the wrong hands.”
Aggressive language to be sure.
Bevis, the owner of Law Weapons & Supply, along with the National Association for Gun Rights, asked for the bans on weapons sales in Naperville and Illinois to be put on hold while they appeal a federal judge’s ruling.
It was last August when the Naperville City Council voted 8-1 to ban the sale of so-called “assault weapons.
Bevis and the gun rights group filed a federal lawsuit in September arguing that Naperville’s ban on the sale of “assault rifles” is “unconstitutional.” The January ban by the Illinois government is a similar though more sweeping statute.
The initial preliminary injunction filing came on Nov. 18 and sought to stop Naperville’s prohibition from being enacted. A similar motion was filed Jan. 24 against the state measure.
But last month, U.S. District Judge Virginia Kendall denied both requests. In her decision, the judge wrote that “assault weapons pose an exceptional danger, more so than standard self-defense weapons such as handguns. High-capacity magazines share similar dangers.”
That led to Bevis appealing Kendall’s ruling to the Court of Appeals and pursuing another injunction.
The appeal charges that the judge ignored two earlier Supreme Court rulings, including last year’s monumental Bruen decision. In that case, the high court enacted a standard by which all gun laws must be based on the history and tradition of gun regulation in the U.S.
Furthermore, the appeal asserts that a “clear error” was made by Kendall when she applied constitutionally irrelevant reasoning to her decision. The Supreme Court does not allow arguments such as the “relative dangerousness” to be a consideration in Second Amendment litigation.
Plus, multiple court rulings established the precedent that commonly owned firearms may not be subject to a blanket ban. The filing said at least 20 million of these falsely labeled “assault weapons” are currently owned by American citizens.
The Tuesday filing noted that Bevis’ business will be all but destroyed by the new laws. Documents show that about 85% of the weapons sold at his establishment are illegal under the city and state ordinances. His cash reserves are now depleted due to the legal actions, and employees have been laid off.
Bevis said that he has family members who now work without pay to try to keep his store afloat. To maintain liquidity, he has dipped into personal lines of credit through bank cards and taken out loans.
The motion added that if the bans are allowed to stay in effect, Law Weapons & Supply will not be able to comply with its 15-year commercial lease.
Both the city and state are guilty of committing a constitutional overreach, and for justice to be served, the bans must be struck down and a law-abiding business allowed to continue to flourish.
