Lawyers say D.C. court’s decision striking down large-capacity magazine
ban should be applied to Illinois
[March 20, 2026]
By Peter Hancock
SPRINGFIELD — A recent decision from a local appellate court in
Washington, D.C., striking down a ban on large-capacity magazines could
have an impact on a pending case challenging a similar ban in Illinois.
In a memo filed March 11 with the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in
Chicago, lawyers for the gun industry asked a three-judge panel hearing
the Illinois challenge to consider the case of Tyree Benson. His
conviction for violating a local ordinance banning large-capacity
magazines was recently overturned by the Washington, D.C., Court of
Appeals on Second Amendment grounds.
But Attorney General Kwame Raoul’s office responded Wednesday, arguing
the 7th Circuit is not bound by decisions of the D.C. court — the
equivalent of a state supreme court. It also described the Benson
decision as an “outlier that conflicts with every other appellate court
to have addressed the issue.”
At issue before the 7th Circuit is a constitutional challenge to the
Protect Illinois Communities Act, or PICA, a sweeping ban on
assault-style weapons and large-capacity magazines.
Illinois lawmakers passed that ban during a lame duck session in January
2023 following a mass shooting the previous summer at a Fourth of July
parade in Highland Park that left seven people dead and dozens more
injured or traumatized.
The convicted gunman in that shooting used a Smith & Wesson M&P15
semiautomatic rifle and multiple 30-round magazines.
In November 2024, a federal judge in East St. Louis sided with gun
rights advocates and the gun industry and struck down the Illinois law
as unconstitutional. The state has appealed that decision to the 7th
Circuit, which heard oral arguments in September but has not yet
rendered a decision. The law remains in effect while the appeal is
pending.
Many legal observers say the case is likely to end up before the U.S.
Supreme Court, which has never issued a definitive ruling on assault
weapons bans. The court did, however, deny requests to issue preliminary
injunctions blocking the law from being enforced while legal challenges
proceeded.
Shifting standards
In other Second Amendment cases in recent years, the court has taken a
more expansive view of the right to bear arms and has been broadly
skeptical of state and local laws that seek to limit that right.
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Lawyers in a case challenging Illinois’ ban on assault weapons and
large-capacity magazines are asking the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals
to consider additional arguments as a three-judge panel continues to
weigh the case. (Capitol News Illinois photo by Peter Hancock)
In 2008, the court ruled in District of Columbia v. Heller that the
Second Amendment protects an individual’s right to bear arms, as opposed
to a collective societal right to maintain a militia. In striking down
an ordinance banning the possession of handguns in the district, the
court also said the Second Amendment protection extends to “all
instruments that constitute bearable arms, even those that were not in
existence at the time of the founding.”
More recently, in 2022’s New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v.
Bruen decision, the court went further by saying the Second Amendment
gives all Americans the right to bear “commonly used” arms in public. It
also said that to pass constitutional muster, a law limiting the right
to bear arms had to be “consistent with the Nation’s historical
tradition of firearm regulation.”
Benson decision
In the case of Tyree Benson, the Washington, D.C., court ruled 2-1 that
magazines of any capacity are “arms” covered by the Second Amendment. It
also said large-capacity magazines in particular “are ubiquitous in our
country, numbering in the hundreds of millions, accounting for about
half of the magazines in the hands of our citizenry, and they come
standard with the most popular firearms sold in America today.”
Erin Murphy, an attorney for a firm representing several plaintiffs in
the Illinois case, argued in the memo that the popularity of
large-capacity magazines put them in the same category as handguns,
which the Supreme Court said in the Heller decision could not be banned.
But Assistant Attorney General Megan Brown argued in a reply memo that
relying on the popularity of a particular weapon or device to determine
whether it’s constitutionally protected represented a kind of circular
logic that the 7th Circuit rejected when it denied a motion to block
enforcement of the assault weapons ban in 2023.
The 7th Circuit has not indicated when it intends to issue a decision.
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