An appeals court handed Chicago another defeat in its effort to restrict the operation of gun ranges in the city.
The US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit on Wednesday ruled that city ordinances restricting gun ranges to manufacturing areas in Chicago are unconstitutional. The ordinances also placed limits on the distances they can be located in relation to other gun ranges and to residential areas, schools, parks and places of worship.
A three-judge panel said the city claimed the ordinances serve important public health and safety interests, specifically that they attract gun thieves, cause airborne lead contamination and carry a risk of fire.
“The city has provided no evidentiary support for these claims, nor has it established that limiting shooting ranges to manufacturing districts and distancing them from the multiple and various uses listed in the buffer zone rule has any connection to reducing these risks,” the court wrote in its opinion.
The court also ruled there was no justification for the banning of anyone younger than 18 from entering a gun range.
However, the court said the city can establish a “more closely tailored age restriction” that does not completely extinguish the right of older adolescents and teens to shoot in a supervised firing range.
Judge Ilana Rovner dissented from the majority’s opinion on the part of the ruling that struck down the ordinance banning those younger than 18 from gun ranges, saying that laws and statutes are employed to protect children from harm, “even where the risk of harm is slight or negligible.”
The decision was notable for another reason. One of the three judges on the panel was Diane Sykes, who was on a list of 11 judges US president-elect Donald Trump made public last year as among those he would consider as candidates for the US Supreme Court.
A city spokesman was not immediately available for comment on the court’s ruling.
Chicago has suffered a string of defeats in its efforts to restrict guns, which top officials have cited as a major reason for a sharp rise of violence in the city.
The Supreme Court forced the city to rewrite its firearms ordinance in June 2010, which had banned the ownership of guns in the city. In response, the city came up with an ordinance outlawing the sale of firearms in the city.
A judge ruled in 2014 that the city’s ban on gun shops violated the constitution.
Chicago imposed a blanket ban on shooting ranges in 2010. The appeals court struck down the ban in 2011, prompting the city council to pass ordinances accomplishing the same thing.
The Second Amendment Foundation and others took the city to court over the ordinances in 2014.
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