Seventh Circuit Upholds Illinois AR-15 Ban

The Seventh Circuit ruled to uphold Illinois' AR-15 ban nine days after the Supreme Court agreed to hear a nearly identical case — and the timing wasn't lost on anyone watching.

Driving the news: On July 9, the Seventh Circuit decided Barnett v. Raoul, affirming Illinois' prohibition on AR-15 rifles. The Supreme Court had granted cert on June 30 in Viramontes v. Cook County — a Seventh Circuit decision involving the exact same legal question. The high court will also hear Grant v. Higgins, concerning Connecticut's comparable ban.

State of play: The circuit courts are now pulling in different directions on how to handle this:

• Ninth Circuit vacated submission in California's Miller v. Bonta on July 1, waiting for SCOTUS to speak first
• Third Circuit invited supplemental briefs in New Jersey's en banc AR-15 challenge, asking how recent Supreme Court decisions in Wolford and Hemani affect the analysis
• Seventh Circuit went ahead and ruled anyway — functionally writing an amicus brief in support of its own prior decision

The trial that didn't matter: What makes Barnett particularly strange is that the Seventh Circuit itself had ordered the district court to hold a trial. U.S. District Judge Stephen McGlynn ran a four-day bench trial — reportedly the most comprehensive factual record ever assembled in a Second Amendment case — and ruled the ban unconstitutional. The Seventh Circuit then reversed him on both the facts and the law. If the appellate court was going to ignore the trial record anyway, the question of why they ordered it in the first place doesn't have a clean answer.

Between the lines: The majority's analytical move here is significant. Heller established that the historical test for banning a weapon is whether it's "dangerous and unusual." The Barnett majority largely set that aside and ran its own historical analysis centered on Bowie knife regulations — regulations that, on closer reading, never actually banned possession of Bowie knives, only concealed carry. One cited Georgia law expressly allowed open carry. The Texas case the majority leaned on stated plainly: "The right to carry a bowie-knife for lawful defense is secured, and must be admitted."

What they're saying:

"To say AR-15s are not in 'common use' does not pass the 'red face' test." — Chief Judge Brennan, dissenting

Chief Judge Brennan's dissent is the sharpest part of the ruling. He argued the common-use test is an individual-rights test — it's about what the people have chosen to own, not what judges decide they need. With millions of AR-15s in civilian hands and the rifle legal in most states, he found the majority's conclusion untenable. He also addressed the circularity problem directly: yes, government could theoretically shrink what's "in common use" by banning things early enough — but that's an argument for the Supreme Court to wrestle with, not a reason for lower courts to abandon the test Heller actually established.

What to watch: Viramontes is now before the Supreme Court, and Grant v. Higgins comes with it. If the Third Circuit strikes down New Jersey's ban before those cases are decided, SCOTUS will have a direct circuit split to resolve rather than a one-sided record. The Court's eventual ruling will determine whether tens of millions of the most commonly owned centerfire rifles in America have constitutional protection — or whether appellate courts can continue substituting historical analogies that don't quite fit.

The bottom line: The Seventh Circuit issued a ruling it knew would be superseded. SCOTUS already took the case. The decision that actually matters is coming from Washington, not Chicago.