An injunction against enforcing the Illinois law prohibiting concealed carry on public transit systems in the state will stand. This is after U.S. District Court Judge Iain D. Johnston refused to stay the injunction, which was granted in September.
Johnston wrote that “after an exhaustive review of the parties’ findings and historical record, as required by Supreme Court precedent, the Court finds that Defendants failed to meet their burden to show an American tradition of firearm regulation at the time of the Founding that would allow Illinois to prohibit Plaintiffs who hold concealed carry permits from carrying concealed handguns for self-defense onto the CTA and Metra.”
Illinois officials are noteworthy for their contempt for the Second Amendment, but their appeal crumbled before Johnston’s bench.
The state’s argument relied heavily on a recent incident in which a person was shot and killed on public transit. Their case fell apart under examination by Johnston, who merely asked if the alleged shooter was a concealed carry permit holder.
After all, this is who the Illinois law would target.
However, the state’s attorneys could not respond adequately, significantly undermining their call to ban law-abiding concealed carry permit holders from exercising their rights on public transportation. When the facts of the incident were revealed, the suspect, in fact, did not hold a carry permit.
In other words, he was already violating the law, and the injunction would have had zero effect on his actions.
Then, the state resorted to the thoroughly discredited legal ploy of “interest balancing,” in which the people’s rights were sacrificed for “public safety.”
This strategy was tossed onto the judicial trash heap by 2022’s monumental Bruen decision, which expressly rejected this argument to determine whether a law passed constitutional muster.
Unfortunately, the injunction only applies to the four individuals who brought the case against Illinois. It does bode well for expanding the scope to all law-abiding concealed carry permit holders in the future as the case continues to wind its way through the legal system.
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