SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (WBBM NEWSRADIO) -- A state lawmaker's challenge to the assault weapons ban passed last year is in the hands of the Illinois Supreme Court.
Lawyers made oral arguments Tuesday morning.
"As to the Second Amendment claim, which the plaintiffs pressed for the first time on appeal," argued Leigh Jahnig for the attorney general's office, "They did not raise that claim in the circuit court, and this that claim is not before this court."
Plaintiff's attorney Jerry Stocks drew much questioning from Chief Justice Mary Jane Theis:
"You say the Second Amendment protects the sale of guns," said the justice. "That is not how I read what "U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel) Alite wrote in the opinion."
Stocks replied, "I said non-commercial sale of guns and regulation of
non-commercial transfer, posession --"
"You said commercial or non-commercial," Theis interrupted. "So now you are
narrowing your Count Five ..."
State Rep. Dan Caulkins brought the lawsuit in an attempt to have the
assault weapons ban - passed following the July 4 Highland Park massacre -thrown out. A lower court ruling preserved the ban.
The justices will take the arguments under advisement.
Reacting to Tuesday's oral arguments in the challenge of the state's assault weapons ban, attorney general Kwame Raoul is not only confident, he's openly questioning the plaintiff's legal strategy.
“Perhaps strategically, unlike others who have challenged this act,” Raoul said after the hearing, “they chose not to plead a Second Amendment case, so there’s no reason for the Supreme Court to go to that issue."
The plaintiff, Caulkins, was not in the mood to predict.
“They asked some very tough, pointed questions of the parties in our case, and we’ll see,” he said. “As the old saying goes, you don’t want to prejudge any trial, particularly the Supreme Court, what they’re going to do.”
Caulkins said he filed the suit as a private citizen, not as a lawmaker; however, he is never not a lawmaker.
Caulkins did ask that two justices - recipients of million-dollar campaign donations - recuse themselves. They didn't.
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