On Friday, a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit overturned an injunction against Illinois’ “assault weapons” ban, deciding that AR-15s are not protected by the Second Amendment.
The preliminary injunction was issued in Barnett v. Raoul by U.S. District Judge Stephen P. McGlynn, a Donald Trump appointee.
McGlynn’s decision was appealed to the Seventh Circuit, where a three-judge panel decided 2 to 1 against the injunction.
The three judges were Ronald Reagan appointee Frank Easterbook, Bill Clinton appointee Diane P. Wood, and Donald Trump appointee Michael P. Brennan.
Easterbrook and Wood constituted the panel majority in overturning the injunction. They noted that Heller (2008) held, “[l]ike most rights, the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited.”
They went on to note that in Heller, the Supreme Court of the United States found that machine guns were not protected under the Second Amendment because they were not “bearable” arms, and that is “because they can be dedicated exclusively to military use.”
Easterbrook and Wood then focused on similarities they found between AR-15s and M16s, the latter of which can be fired in full-auto or three-round burst modes. They wrote:
The similarity between the AR-15 and the M16 only increases when we take into account how easy it is to modify the AR-15 by adding a “bump stock” (as the shooter in the 2017 Las Vegas event had done) or auto-sear to it, thereby making it, in essence, a fully automatic weapon. In a decision addressing a ban on bump stocks enacted by the Maryland legislature, another federal court found that bump-stock devices enable “rates of fire between 400 to 800 rounds per minute.”
They also noted that both guns use the same ammunition and “deliver the same kinetic energy.”
Judge Brennan dissented from the majority decision, stressing that the Illinois “assault weapons” ban fails if tested by Bruen (2022) because the ban has no historical precedent in American tradition.
Brennan wrote: “Because the banned firearms and magazines warrant constitutional protection, and the government parties have failed to meet their burden to show that their bans are part of the history and tradition of firearms regulation, preliminary injunctions are justified against enforcement of the challenged laws.”
The case is Barnett v. Raoul, No. 23-1353 in the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit.
WATCH: Here’s the Difference Between an AR-15 and an “Assault Weapon”
ahawkinsAWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio and a Turning Point USA Ambassador. He was a Visiting Fellow at the Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal in 2010, a speaker at the 2023 Western Conservative Summit, and he holds a Ph.D. in Military History, with a focus on the Vietnam War (brown water navy), U.S. Navy since Inception, the Civil War, and Early Modern Europe. Follow him on Instagram: @awr_hawkins. You can sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange. Reach him directly at
