BELLEVUE, WA – Attorneys representing the Second Amendment Foundation and its partners in a case challenging the Illinois semi-auto ban today filed a 36-page response to Cook County’s motion for summary judgment in a case challenging Cook County’s ban.
Joining SAF in this case are the Firearms Policy Coalition and three private citizens, all Cook County residents. They are Cutberto Viramontes, Rubi Joyal and Christopher Khaya. They are represented by attorneys David Sigale of Wheaton, Ill., and David H. Thompson, Peter A. Patterson and William V. Bergstrom, all with Cooper & Kirk in Washington, D.C. The case is known as Viramontes v. Cook County. It was filed in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, in August 2021.
“Cook County has made only one argument in its motion that seems to misread the Supreme Court’s Bruen ruling from June of last year,” said SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb. “The county is claiming that ‘arms’ applies only to firearms that ‘facilitate armed self-defense,’ and makes the arbitrary claim that the banned firearms are excluded from this definition because ‘there is nothing defensive whatsoever’ about them.
“Every firearm can be used for self-defense,” he added, “and either the county knows that already, or they are woefully ignorant about firearms in general, and especially the ones affected by the ban.”
SAF Executive Director Adam Kraut, a practicing attorney, noted, “The Bruen ruling made it clear that every Second Amendment case must proceed first by analyzing the text of the amendment and then examining the country’s history of firearm regulation, to determine whether the banned firearm is ‘dangerous and unusual.’ One look at the number of modern semiautomatic rifles currently owned by private citizens shows they are hardly ‘dangerous and unusual’ in any context.
“The county further argues the AR-15 is a semiautomatic version of the military M-16, which is nonsense,” Kraut continued. “All of the county’s arguments seem aimed at creating a false impression about the banned firearms, which operate no differently than any other semi-auto. The county is simply wrong in its arguments, and the motion for summary judgment should be denied.”