Gun control advocates were boosted on Wednesday following Illinois lawmakers’ decision to ban military-style weapons in the state, as well as the US supreme court’s decision to allow New York to continue enforcing a new gun law that bans guns from “sensitive places”.
Illinois governor JB Pritzker signed the Protect Illinois Communities Act, which places an immediate ban on assault weapons, high-capacity magazines and switches, on Tuesday evening.
“I’m tired of living in a world where a mass shooting needs a title so you know which one we’re referring to,” Pritzker said in a statement.
“We will keep fighting to ensure that future generations only hear about massacres like Highland Park, Sandy Hook and Uvalde in their textbooks,” referring to two mass shootings in elementary schools – one in 2012 and the other last year.
The ban comes six months after a mass shooting at a Fourth of July parade in Highland Park, Illinois, which left seven people dead and over 30 injured. The suspect was able to legally purchase multiple guns – including the murder weapon – despite being previously known to police due to prior threatening behavior.
In the wake of the shooting, state representative Bob Morgan, a Democrat, introduced the wide-ranging gun control bill in December.
“I am in awe of the countless victims and survivors and family members who sat with us, told us their stories, and refused to give up until they got the change we all needed,” Morgan tweeted on Tuesday as the bill was passed.
In addition to banning military-style weapons, the law will limit long guns to 10 rounds a magazine and no more than 15 rounds for handguns. It also prohibits the possession and use of rapid-fire devices that help increase the firing rate of semi-automatic weapons.
The new law requires individuals who already own guns to register their weapons with the Illinois state police. And it will expedite universal background checks.
Despite the success of the bill, Republican lawmakers and pro-gun groups have voiced their opposition.
“You’ve got to know that the actions that you are taking right now are tyrannous,” a state senator, Darren Bailey, said during Monday’s debate. “You also must know that I and millions of other gun owners in this state will not comply.”
The Illinois State Rifle Association (ISRA) has also condemned the bill.
“Magazine bans have been sent back,” Richard Pearson, executive director of the ISRA, said, CBS reported. “We have firearm registration. We have the common use provisions. So we have all kinds of things in that bill, you know, that will incur constitutional challenges.”
Meanwhile, on Wednesday, the supreme court justices turned away a plea by gun owners who wanted the court to reject a lower court’s decision to allow a new gun law in New York, which bans the weapons from “sensitive places” including schools and playgrounds, to be enforced.
New York lawmakers rewrote state handgun laws over the summer after a June supreme court ruling invalidated the old system for granting permits to carry handguns outside the home.
The ruling said Americans have a right to carry firearms in public for self-defense, invalidating the New York law, which required people to show a specific need to get a license to carry a gun outside the home.
The new law New York passed in the wake of the ruling broadly expanded who can get a license to carry a handgun but increased training requirements and required applicants to provide more information including a list of their social media accounts.
The law also included a long list of “sensitive places” where firearms are banned, including schools, playgrounds, places of worship, entertainment venues, places that serve alcohol and Times Square in New York City.
A US district judge, Glenn Suddaby, declared portions of the law unconstitutional and issued a preliminary injunction barring certain provisions’ enforcement.
The US court of appeals for the second circuit put that ruling on hold. Challengers to the law asked the supreme court to step in and allow Suddaby’s ruling to go into effect while the case continues.
The appeals court has not finished its review of the case, a circumstance under which supreme court justices are often reluctant to weigh in.
In a two-paragraph statement that accompanied the court’s order, conservative justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas said the New York law at issue “presents novel and serious questions”.
But they said they understood the decision not to intervene now, “to reflect respect” for the appeals court’s “procedures in managing its own docket, rather than expressing any view on the merits of the case”.
