Chicago's Firearm Transfer Ban Falls to Second Amendment Ruling
Things are looking up for gun owners in Illinois. On Monday, as some 4,500 concealed carry applications flooded the state's online portal on its first full day of operation, Obama-appointed U.S. District Judge Edmond E. Chang of the Northern District of Illinois issued a significant opinion that invalidated Chicago's ban on firearm sales and transfers within the city. The suit was brought by the Illinois Association of Firearms Retailers and three individuals, with the backing of NRA.
The Chicago transfer ban was part of a series of ordinances the city hastily enacted after its total ban on handgun possession was invalidated by the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals' 2010 opinion in McDonald v. Chicago. Chicago's crusade to be the nation's most oppressive jurisdiction for gun owners has yielded other important victories for the Second Amendment. These included the Seventh Circuit's holding in 2011's Ezell v. Chicago that Chicago's ban on discharge (notwithstanding its requirement that residents obtain live-fire training as a condition of owning a gun in the city) was unconstitutional. Other aspects of the city's wide-ranging gun control regime have been whittled down in response to litigation and the broad preemption provisions of Illinois' recently-enacted Firearm Concealed Carry Act (the result of yet another successful Second Amendment case in the Seventh Circuit, 2011's Shepard v. Madigan). The transfer ban remained, however, a symbol of the same political denial and impudence that have ironically helped move the Second Amendment needle in the right direction through litigation time and again.