A coalition of pro-gun organizations, led by the National Rifle Association, has filed a brief with the U.S. Supreme Court requesting that it hear the constitutional challenge to Illinois’ public transit carry ban.
The NRA, along with the Association of New Jersey Rifle & Pistol Clubs, the Gun Owners Action League, the New Jersey Firearms Owners Syndicate and the New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, filed the brief in Schoenthal v. Raoul, which challenges Illinois’ law that prohibits concealed carry licensees from carrying firearms on public transportation unless the firearms are unloaded and secured—effectively rendering them useless for lawful self-defense.
In a poorly thought-out decision last September, the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the ban, ruling that “crowded spaces” like subways qualify as “sensitive places” where the government may broadly prohibit the exercise of the right to bear arms.
“The Second Amendment protects an individual’s right to self-defense… It does not bar the people’s representatives from enacting laws—consistent with our nation’s historical tradition of regulation—that ensure public transportation systems remain free from accessible firearms,” the court ruling stated.
The court added that the country’s Founding Fathers likely never envisioned people traveling around in “crowded and confined metal tubes.”
Plaintiffs, of course, petitioned SCOTUS to review the decision. And in the recently filed amicus brief, the NRA and the other organizations explained how the 7th Circuit Court got the decision all wrong.
“Our brief urges the Supreme Court to grant review to clarify how courts should identify historical analogues under the Court’s text-and-history test for Second Amendment challenges,” NRA’s Institute for Legislative Action (NRA-ILA) wrote in a news item on its website. “It explains that lower courts are increasingly upholding firearm regulations by analogizing at an excessively high level of abstraction, effectively reintroducing interest-balancing under the guise of historical analysis. The Seventh Circuit’s decision exemplifies this error by inventing a new “sensitive place” category—“crowded spaces”—to uphold Illinois’s ban.
The brief states: “The 7th Circuit upheld Illinois’s public transit carry ban as a ‘sensitive place’ restriction, despite acknowledging that public transportation bears little resemblance to the historically recognized sensitive places—courthouses, polling places, legislative buildings, and schools. Rather than analogizing to those categories of places, the court created a new ‘sensitive place,’ concluding that ‘crowded spaces restrictions fall under the sensitive places doctrine.’ That holding contradicts this Court’s clear instruction that a place may not be deemed sensitive ‘simply because it is crowded.’”
Ultimately, the pro-gun organizations are the high court to clear up the mess involving “historical analogues” so courts will all be on the same page moving forward—specifically the one prescribed by the Supreme Court in the Bruen ruling.
“This case provides an ideal vehicle for the Court to cabin the proper level of generality in Second Amendment analysis, since the 7th Circuit’s decision turns squarely on the level of abstraction it applied,” the brief concluded.
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