Attorneys for the village of Deerfield and gun rights advocacy groups are due back in court Oct. 12 to wage arguments in two lawsuits challenging the village’s authority to ban assault weapons.
In June, a Lake County Circuit Court judge issued a temporary restraining order barring Deerfield from enforcing the ban until the case could be considered. The order from Judge Luis Berrones came on the eve of a June 13 deadline for Deerfield residents to turn in any guns that fit the village’s definition of assault weapons, remove them from the village or alter the weapons so they were no longer prohibited under the ordinance.
Now, Guns Save Life, the Illinois State Rifle Association and other plaintiffs are asking the court for a preliminary injunction. One of the two suits was filed by gun owner John William Wombacher III and Guns Save Life, and is backed by the National Rifle Association. The other challenge was brought by gun owner Daniel Easterday, the state rifle association and the Second Amendment Foundation.
The legal jousting centers on Deerfield’s decision to ban possession of certain firearms in the aftermath of recent mass shootings. Local gun owners and gun-rights groups swiftly filed lawsuits claiming Deerfield trustees had no authority to ban assault weapons five years after the Illinois legislature made regulation of assault weapons an exclusive power of the state.
Village officials have said the ban enacted April 2 is an amendment to its 2013 ordinance requiring safe storage and transportation of assault weapons within the village. The plaintiffs have contended Deerfield’s vote for an all-out ban was new legislation and not an amendment.
Berrones concurred with that view in his June ruling granting the temporary restraining order.
“The banning of assault weapons is substantively different than regulations regarding the transportation and storage of such weapons by one who owns or possesses an assault weapon,” Berrones wrote.
In 2013, the Illinois legislature was under order from the U.S. Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals to rewrite state gun laws because the federal appeals court had found Illinois law prohibiting gun owners from carrying concealed weapons to be unconstitutional. Under pressure from both sides of the gun debate, legislators made regulation of assault weapons the exclusive power of the state, but allowed local regulations already on the books to stand.
In addition, the legislature gave municipalities 10 days beyond the effective date of the state’s gun amendments to enact new local regulations. Municipalities that enacted regulations within the permitted time frame could later amend those ordinances, the statute said.
In court filings on behalf of Deerfield, attorney Christopher Wilson has maintained the village’s decision to strengthen its existing ordinance was envisioned by Illinois legislators when they allowed local governments to amend their regulations in the future.
“Plaintiffs argument that only by adopting the most extreme measure at the outset could Deerfield reserve its right to ban assault weapons is inconsistent with the norms of good governance,” Wilson wrote.
Countered David Sigale, attorney for the state rifle association, “(Deerfield) had 10 days in 2013 to regulate assault weapons as it saw fit and it did so. It is not about what the defendant considers good governance. It is about the plain language of the governing statutes.”
The plaintiffs assert that Berrones already has rejected the argument that Deerfield’s ban is an amendment.
The Deerfield ordinance outlaws, among other weapons, semiautomatic rifles that have a fixed magazine with a capacity to accept more than 10 rounds of ammunition; shotguns with a revolving cylinder; and semiautomatic pistols and rifles that can accept large-capacity magazines and possess one of a list of other features. The ordinance lists dozens of specific models, including the AR-15, the AK-47 and the Uzi.
In its rationale for amending the ordinance, the Village of Deerfield noted that in the past five years, “assault weapons have been increasingly used in an alarming number of notorious mass shooting incidents at public schools, public venues, places of worship and places of public accommodation.”
The ordinance specifically mentions the deaths of 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in February; the fatal shooting of 26 people at the First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, Texas; the 58 people killed at the music festival in Las Vegas and the 49 people killed at the Pulse nightclub in Orland, Fla..
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