BELLEVUE, WA – Plaintiffs in a federal challenge of the Illinois Public Transit carry ban have filed a brief in support of their earlier motion for summary judgment in the case, which is financially supported by the Second Amendment Foundation.
The case is known as Schoenthal v. Raoul and is currently in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Western Division. Plaintiffs are Benjamin Schoenthal, Mark Wroblewski, Joseph Vesel, and Douglas Winston. They are represented by attorney David G. Sigale of Lombard, Ill. The defendants are Attorney General Kwame Raoul and State’s Attorneys Rick Amato (DeKalb County), Robert Berlin (DuPage County), Kimberly M. Foxx (Cook County) and Eric Rinehart (Lake County), all in their official capacities.
“As noted in the brief,” said SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb, “this case asserts the Illinois Public Transportation carry ban cannot stand unless it is consistent with the historical tradition of firearms regulation at the time of the ratification of the right to keep and bear arms. It is abundantly clear the defendants can’t provide such information, and in their response, they have failed to offer any Founding-era evidence supporting the ban.”
In other states with licensed concealed carry, legally-armed private citizens can utilize public transportation. Illinois, however, continues to cling to a restriction which has no historic legal foundation. It simply denies the right to bear arms arbitrarily to anyone using public transportation because of state government’s long-standing revulsion toward firearms and the Second Amendment, Gottlieb said.
“This ban clearly violates the Second Amendment,” he observed, “which the defendants should realize, since the Second Amendment was incorporated to the states via the 14th Amendment in a case they’re all familiar with, McDonald v. City of Chicago. SAF won that case at the Supreme Court in 2010, nullifying Chicago’s handgun ban.”