“(Illinois’ Community Protection Act) is an unconstitutional affront to the Second Amendment and must be enforced,” federal judge Stephen McGlynn wrote in a 168-page ruling on Friday. acting. “The government cannot deprive law-abiding citizens of their guaranteed right to self-defense as a means of crime. The court will suspend the execution of the permanent order for a period of thirty (30) days from the date of this order.”

Illinois banned the sale and possession of more than 170 semiautomatic firearms and magazines above certain capacities in January 2023. Federal lawsuits were filed in the following weeks.

The state argues that the banned firearms are too similar to military firearms, are dangerous and unusual, and their ban is for public safety. The plaintiffs argue that the ban on jointly owned firearms violates the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms.

Four consolidated cases in federal court in the Southern District of Illinois were consolidated by McGlynn in the spring of 2023. After granting a preliminary injunction against the law in April 2023, the state appealed. McGlynn’s preliminary injunction then lasted six days before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit stayed McGlynn’s order and subsequently ruled in favor of the state on preliminary grounds.

The case was then back in district court, where McGlynn held a four-day trial in September. After the litigants filed final briefs last month, McGlynn issued her ruling on the final judgment on Friday.

“The Court is also not convinced that weapons like the AR-15 and its relatives are ‘dangerous and unusual,'” McGlynn wrote.

McGlynn also criticized the state’s ban on limiting magazine capacities.

“The court notes that these devices are also commonly used and have legitimate self-defense purposes,” the judge wrote. “For magazines, every round counts in a self-defense scenario—reloading takes a lot of time during which the defender can be hurt or injured.”

When the preliminary issues were argued in the appeals court, the majority of the three-judge panel argued that semi-automatic rifles like the AR-15 were too similar to military firearms that can be converted to automatics. McGlynn rejected that with his final court order Friday.

“Therefore, the Court holds that ‘military use’ refers to weapons that are selected, procured, tested and issued to members of the military for use in combat,” he wrote. “With this in mind, none of the weapons, magazines or attachments banned by PICA can be called ‘military grade’ because they have not been issued to the military for use in combat.”

Proponents of the gun ban say the law was needed to protect people from bad actors who might use such firearms in a mass shooting like the one in Highland Park on July 4, 2022.

“While the Court sympathizes with those who have lost loved ones to gun violence, such tragedies are no excuse to curtail the rights guaranteed to the Illinois public by the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution,” McGlynn wrote. “Regardless of the desire of state governments to restrict the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens under the guise of crime control, the Second Amendment conclusively protects the right of law-abiding citizens to defend themselves using weapons that are in common use. “

Ultimately, McGlynn said the government had not met its burden of proving that the history and tradition of firearms regulations support PICA’s “extensive exploration of hundreds of gun models, magazines and attachments used by dozens of millions of law-abiding citizens of the United States. .”

The Second Amendment Foundation praised McGlynn’s ruling.

“This is a great victory for the Second Amendment Foundation and the right to keep and bear arms,” ​​said SAF Founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb. “The gun ban lobby and their bought and paid for politicians have just suffered a major defeat.”

An appeal by the state to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit is expected.