The US Supreme Court has declined to put a temporary hold on an Illinois law that bans the sale of assault-style weapons and a variety of other guns and accessories.
The law will require existing owners of the restricted items to register them by 1 January.
A gun rights group and the owner of a gun shop have sued to stop the implementation of the law.
Their case has consistently been rebuffed by lower courts.
The legislation took effect in January and sales of the restricted guns were stopped immediately.
This is a rhetorical trick. We do not need a technical definition of “assault weapon”. We need a legal one. The legal definition here was written by the Illinois legislature and seems to be upheld by the courts.
If someone asks you for a technical definition for a gun law, see if the relevant legal definition exists.
It was upheld, but it’s also theater, you need to understand. Without fail, every time a state legislature engages in “assault weapon” bans, without fail, they:
Ban a bunch of weapons that have never been used in a mass shooting.
Fail to ban a bunch of weapons that have been used in mass shootings.
Fail to future-proof the law in any way, so new firearms that will become popular in mass shootings are not banned.
The net result is new restrictions with no relation to actual gun violence. They could pass laws addressing the actual problems at hand, like lowering the bar for access to mental health care. They choose not to.
That’s because it’s not about public safety, it’s about disarmament.