The National Rifle Association filed a federal lawsuit over Illinois' ban on semiautomatic weapons, claiming the prohibition violates the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
According to CBS News, the NRA on Tuesday joined other gun-rights activists seeking to repeal the new law, which bans a number of rapid-fire pistols and long guns in addition to high-capacity magazines and attachments.
Signed on Jan. 10 by Illinois Democrat Gov. J.B. Pritzker, the law is in response to the mass shooting last year that killed seven and injured 30 at a Fourth of July parade in Highland Park, a suburb of Chicago.
Two Benton, Illinois, gun owners are the lead plaintiffs in the NRA lawsuit, the second complaint to be filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Illinois, according to CBS. They are joined by two gun dealers and shooting range operators from southern Illinois and a Connecticut-based shooting sports trade association.
The NRA filing points to the Supreme Court's landmark Heller decision in 2008, which refuses to permit any restriction on "weapons that are in common use" today unless, as another ruling last summer found, evidence of an "enduring American tradition" of restriction exists.
According to the lawsuit, the Illinois statute "takes the radical step of banning nearly every modern semiautomatic rifle — the single-most popular type of rifle in the country, possessed by Americans in the tens of millions."
A judge in conservative Effingham County temporarily blocked the law on Friday amid claims that the law violates the Illinois Constitution.
Speaking with CBS on Monday, Pritzker cited the Effingham County case as an example of gun-rights activists "venue shopping" to obtain a favorable outcome.
"There's always some place to go among 102 counties in Illinois to bring a case with a judge who whose political future might rest on the decision that he or she makes," Pritzker said. "It was poorly decided, and it will be overturned. I'm very confident of that."
Edwards County Sheriff Darby Boewe, one of dozens of Illinois county sheriffs who said they will not enforce the ban, posted a letter on the sheriff's department Facebook page explaining his decision.
"Part of my duties that I accepted upon being sworn into office was to protect the rights to all of us in the Constitution," Boewe wrote. "One of those rights enumerated is the right of the people to keep and bear arms provided under the Second Amendment.
"Therefore, as the custodian of the jail and chief law enforcement officer for Edwards County, that neither myself or my office will be checking to ensure that lawful gun owners register their weapons with the state, nor will we be arresting or housing individuals that have been charged solely with noncompliance of this act."
Pritzker said sheriffs like Boewe make up a fraction of Illinois' law enforcement.
"You don't get to choose what laws you enforce when you are in law enforcement," Pritzker told CBS. "You have to enforce the laws whether you like them or not. You take an oath to do that. And these sheriffs have taken that oath."
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