CHICAGO — Even in the face of a pending Supreme Court decision and the Justice Department itself upholding the right of Americans to keep and bear arms, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals delivered an opinion justifying the ban on America’s most popular firearm, the AR-15, and similar semiautomatic rifles.
On July 9, the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit issued its opinion in Barnett v. Raoul, a case on appeal from the United States District Court for the Southern District of Illinois (the case itself is a consolidation of other challenges). Oral arguments took place in September 2025, and the three-judge panel, including Chief Judge Brennan, Judge Easterbrook, and Judge St. Eve, issued a 2-1 decision with Judge Brennan dissenting.
The challenged statute is the 2023 Protect Illinois Communities Act, itself a knee-jerk response to the criminal act of a mass-casualty shooting on Independence Day. The state, well-entrenched in the already anti-Second Amendment mindset, took this opportunity to push a ban on “assault weapons.” In November of 2024, a district court found the ban unconstitutional and issued a permanent injunction against the act. The state appealed.
This is one of the first cases where the Department of Justice indicated it would take a pro-Second Amendment approach during this administration, with AAG Harmeet Dhillon speaking during oral arguments and defending the right of Americans to keep and bear America’s most popular rifle, the AR-15.
By way of reminder, the Second Amendment of the Constitution states, “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
A simplified summary of the entire 44-page opinion is that states, backed by courts, have created a complex, appeal-to-emotion defense of their attempt to disarm law-abiding Americans couched in the guise of “public safety.” In particular, they have adjusted their aim to target one style of firearm.
In a country of more than 100,000,000 gun owners, the vast majority of Americans are law-abiding, yet the act bans possession of an object, punishing and disarming the law-abiding. This fact was not litigated in this case. Instead, the majority begins its discussion in the context of “the unprecedented societal concern of mass shootings,” adding “…the presence of assault weapons and large-capacity magazines is strongly correlated with the severity of the societal problem.”
The court asserts there are limits on the Second Amendment and other enumerated rights, and in instituting those limits, it attempts to apply decisions from OTHER circuits in its defense, stating, “In any event, we remain persuaded by the unanimous circuit consensus.”
Then, with a sarcastic nod to Bruen (the real governing law of the land when it comes to evaluating gun control), the court puts forth its main defense, that “dangerous” weapons may be banned, leaning heavily on knife regulations as the key historical analogue:
…we focus here instead on a leading example of this tradition: regulations of the Bowie knife – or, as one Reconstruction-era court called it, the ‘instrument of almost certain death.’
The court is rather careless with its approach, suggesting that any combination of the word “dangerous” is sufficient to employ the ability to ban some weapons, as suggested under Heller, which references the tradition of prohibiting the carrying of “dangerous and unusual weapons.”
Using one or another label – “dangerous and unusual,” “unusually dangerous,” “especially dangerous,” “particularly capable of unprecedented lethality” – these courts have coalesced around a largely overlapping set of historical regulations imposing targeted restrictions on weapons whose danger and lethality stand out. These courts have further concluded that those regulations justify restrictions on AR-15s and large-capacity magazines equivalent to those the Act imposes.
Having built this foundation, the court then concludes, “The record confirms that AR-15s equipped with thirty-round magazines are indeed particularly dangerous…”
As for the fact that most Americans who own and use AR-15s are not criminals, the court couldn’t care less, a position it supports with this blunt dismissal:
The district court, plaintiffs, and dissenting opinion have made much of the fact that AR-15s and large-capacity magazines are popular – i.e., there are many in civilian hands – and therefore (they argue) “in common use” as Heller and its progeny have used that term. We do not deny that AR-15s are “both widely legal and bought by many ordinary consumers.” As in Bevis, however, “we decline to base our assessment of the constitutionality of [the Act] on numbers alone.”
AAG Dhillon, in her lawsuit against Denver over its AR-15 ban, noted for the record that AR-15s are owned by “tens of millions” of Americans, with 28 million AR-style rifles in circulation as of 2021, and likely millions more today in 2026 (the FBI conducts an adjusted ~1,000,000 background checks for firearms transfers each month).
In his dissent, Chief Judge Brennan recognizes the above fact in his opening statement:
Our Nation’s enduring traditions forbid governments from prohibiting firearms commonly owned for self-defense. Because the people have overwhelmingly chosen the AR-15 rifle and its magazine as their weapon of choice, they are protected by the Second Amendment.
Judge Brennan wisely underscores an important concept: it is the people, NOT the government, who decide what arms are most suitable for self-defense, and as tools for the deterrence of tyranny, like the regime in Illinois that would disarm its citizens.
The impending Supreme Court decision in the next term, looking at “assault weapons” bans, is likely to finally correct the courts on this issue.
