By Paul Lathrop | Contributing Editor
The Second Appellate Court of Illinois has overturned a lower court ruling in a case challenging the Deerfield Village ban on so-called “assault weapons” and original capacity magazines, and Alan Gottlieb, founder and executive vice president of the Second Amendment Foundation told TGM there will be an appeal.
SAF, along with the Illinois State Rifle Association and Deerfield resident Daniel Easterday sued the village in 2018.
In 2013, Illinois enacted a state preemption law but gave individual municipalities 10 days to pass local regulations. Deerfield did just that, setting up definitions and storage requirements for “assault weapons” but not outright banning them. Then in 2018, the Deerfield Village Board decided that safe storage was not enough and passed a full ban on certain firearms. They called this an amendment to their ordinance of 2013.
Easterday spoke with TGM Wednesday. He assured the fight isn’t finished.
“As of yesterday,” he said, “I talked with David Sigale who is my lead counsel, and also works with the ISRA and the Second Amendment Foundation, and he is going to be talking with the attorney for the Guns Save Life Lawsuit because they were joined last year and they are going to work in a coordinated way going forward to continue our challenge until we can’t challenge it anymore.”
The lawsuit claimed that the 2018 change was not an amendment but an entirely new ordinance. Plaintiffs won a permanent injunction to stop the village from enforcing the ordinance in 2019.
On Monday that all changed when the Second District Appellate Court of Illinois overturned the trial court’s ruling.
Easterday said the next step is the Illinois Supreme Court, and that like the U.S. Supreme Court, the Illinois Supreme court doesn’t have to take cases and can decide which cases they want to hear.
“We think that there is a daily good chance that the will take our case given that it was a split decision with a very strongly worded dissent,” he said
The Lake and McHenry County Scanner quoted unidentified Deerfield officials who insisted the gun control ordinance will “initially be enforced primarily through education and voluntary compliance.”
Violators could be fined from $250 to $1,000 a day.
In a statement, the village said Deerfield police officers will not be going door-to-door to ensure compliance.
