Naperville Gun Shop Owner Appeals Ruling On Assault Weapon Ban

NAPERVILLE, IL — The owner of a Naperville gun shop is appealing a judge’s decision earlier this year that will allow the city’s ban on semi-automatic assault weapons to go into effect, which has a direct bearing on business owners who deal in firearms.

Robert Bevis, who owns Law Weapons & Supply, filed an injunction pending appeal on Tuesday that seeks to have the city’s ordinance and a statewide ban on certain weapons blocked until lawsuits regarding the constitutionality of the law can be settled in the courts.

Bevis filed a lawsuit last fall along with the National Association for Gun Rights stating that Naperville’s ordinance banning the sale of assault weapons is unconstitutional and should be overturned. In January, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed a statewide ban on certain firearms about six months after the mass shooting at Highland Park’s July 4 parade.

Bevis had previously filed injunctions in federal court against both the Naperville ordinance and the Illinois state law, but a judge denied both motions, including Bevis’ motion seeking a temporary restraining order and a preliminary injunction.

“Assault weapons pose an exceptional danger, more so than standard self-defense weapons such as handguns,” Judge Virginia Kendall wrote in her decision. “High-capacity magazines share similar dangers.”

Bevis immediately filed an appeal to Kendall’s ruling in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit and is pursuing another injunction while his appeal is pending.

In the filing this week, the appeal stated that a “substantial” part, roughly 85 percent, of Bevis’ shop’s business consists of the commercial sale of firearms and magazines that are banned by the challenged laws.

Last August, Naperville city council members voted 8-1 to ban the sale of specific high-powered assault weapons. The issue of assault weapon sales was first raised at a city council meeting in mid-July following the mass shooting that claimed the lives of seven people and injured dozens more at a Fourth of July Parade in Highland Park.

Bevis said that since the laws went into effect earlier this year, his shop’s sales have plummeted, and claims if the laws remain in place, his shop will go out of business. The filing also said that he has struggled to cover monthly personal expenses such as his mortgage and car payments and has taken out personal loans to pay his bills and maxed out his credit limits, court records indicate.

The appeal states that Kendall’s decision essentially ignored two previous Supreme Court rulings. In one of those rulings last year involving a New York lawsuit, the Supreme Court maintained that Second Amendment challenges are to be decided by applying a text informed by a history test.

The filing said that the district court judge made a "clear error" in her ruling based on Supreme Court findings and then compounded the error by ruling by upholding the laws for a constitutionally irrelevant reason (“relative dangerousness”) and a reason forbidden by the Supreme Court.

The appeal also cites previous court rulings that determined that absolute bans of commonly held firearms are “categorically unconstitutional. In addition, it claims that at least 20 million semi-automatic firearms such as those defined as “assault weapons” in the challenged laws are owned by millions of American citizens who use those firearms for lawful purposes.

It also claims that weapons that are included under the challenged laws in Naperville and Illinois are legal to build, buy, and own under federal law and the laws of over 40 states.

The appeal was filed months ahead of when the Illinois Supreme Court is scheduled to hear arguments on whether the new state law violates the Illinois state constitution.