Yesterday was the oral arguments in Sangamon County Circuit Court over Guns Save Life’s challenge to the FOID statute. A statute which we see as patently unconstitutional because, as we all know, there were no FOID cards in 1791 to own firearms or ammunition.
I was unable to attend as I was running behind on GunNews. Way behind. Sorry, put family largely first over the whole Father’s Day weekend. Monster trucks on Saturday (spoiler: the motocross riders were more impressive by an order of magnitude) and daddy things on Sunday.
Enough with that.
Our attorneys send me a synopsis of what happened.
It was a summary-judgement argument in our FOID case Guns Save Life v. Kelly (Kelly was the previous director of the Illinois State Police back in 2019 when the case was originally filed).
Judge Maurer, our original judge has been replaced. We’re guessing it was for health reasons (which is why we missed our original April court date).
Judge Ascher heard the case. Both sides presented oral arguments. The judge asked zero questions.
Let me repeat that: The judge asked zero questions.
Both sides were asked to submit proposed orders – basically doing the judge’s work for him – in three weeks (21 days).
My hot take: I don’t know Judge Ascher from a can of paint. I suspect he was unhappy with getting assigned this hot potato. Judge Maurer is, I’ve been told, a gun owning conservative-leaning fellow. Judge Ascher? Dunno. Maybe I’ll get a mystery call from a relative that will help me assess his pedigree.
I suspect that given he asked zero questions, that suggests to me that he had zero interest in this whole issue. The last thing he wanted was to inherit a case that would burden him with a bunch of evening work writing a decision. Heck, he probably didn’t even want to read the briefs in the case, much less have to write a hundred page decision.
So he had both sides write proposed orders and he’s going to do minimal work and issue a decision he knows will be appealed on up the food chain.
In short, he doesn’t care and has better things to do.
It wouldn’t surprise me if he thought to himself he would rather play a couple of rounds of golf than read these briefs and write a decision in a civil rights lawsuit.
Because make no mistake, this is a potential landmark civil rights case.
Mary Miller shared this…
Thank you John Boch of Guns Save Life for fighting in court against Illinois’ unconstitutional FOID cards. #2A https://t.co/YzzpTaCVXH
— Mary Miller (@Miller_Congress) June 21, 2023
Thank you Mary. You’re way too kind.
Were you there? Please, by all means, share your hot take in comments!
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