Court Opinion

ID: 9901535
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-11-21 21:03:09.656659+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:21:34.085850
License: Public Domain

2023 IL App (1st) 231033-U

                                                                            SECOND DIVISION
                                                                             November 21, 2023

                                         No. 1-23-1033

NOTICE: This order was filed under Supreme Court Rule 23 and is not precedent except in the
limited circumstances allowed under Rule 23(e)(1).
______________________________________________________________________________

                                    IN THE
                        APPELLATE COURT OF ILLINOIS
                           FIRST JUDICIAL DISTRICT
______________________________________________________________________________

IN THE INTEREST OF C.P., A MINOR,               )     Appeal from the
(THE PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF ILLINOIS            )     Circuit Court of
                                                )     Cook County.
      Petitioner-Appellee,                      )
                                                )
v.                                              )     No. 22 JD 00961
                                                )
C.P.                                            )     Honorable
                                                )     Kathryn Vahey,
      Minor Respondent-Appellant.)              )     Judge Presiding.
______________________________________________________________________________

       JUSTICE ELLIS delivered the judgment of the court.
       Justices McBride and Cobbs concurred in the judgment.

                                            ORDER

¶1     Held: Subsections of AUUW and UPF statutes, imposing age-based restrictions on
             firearms possession by those under 21 and 18 years of age, respectively, do not
             violate Second Amendment, either facially or as-applied to 16-year-old minor-
             respondent.

¶2     Sixteen-year-old minor-respondent, C.P., was adjudicated delinquent on one count each

of aggravated unlawful use of a weapon (AUUW) and unlawful possession of a firearm (UPF).

He claims that the relevant statutory provisions violate the second amendment, both facially and

as applied to him. 720 ILCS 5/24-1.6(a)(1), (a)(3)(I); 5/24-3.1(a)(1) (West 2022). Our supreme

court has rejected these challenges and upheld the provisions at issue. People v. Mosley, 2015 IL

115872, ¶¶ 33-38; In re Jordan G., 2015 IL 116834, ¶¶ 21-25; People v. Aguilar, 2013 IL
No. 1-23-1033

112116, ¶¶ 24-28.

¶3     True, these precedents pre-date New York State Rifle & Pistol Assn., Inc. v. Bruen, ___

U.S. ___, 142 S. Ct. 2111 (2022). All the same, they were decided on precisely the grounds of

“text, as informed by history,” that Bruen now requires. Id. at 2127. This point bears emphasis,

so we will linger on it for a moment, even though the citations to Mosley, Jordan G., and Aguilar

suffice, on their own, to dispose of this case.

¶4     The AUUW statute prohibits anyone under the age of 21 from possessing a handgun

outside the home, unless the person is engaged in certain specified lawful activities that are not

relevant here. 720 ILCS 5/24-1.6(a)(1), (a)(3)(I) (West 2022). The UPF statute prohibits anyone

under the age of 18 from possessing a concealable firearm. 720 ILCS 5/24-3.1(a)(1) (West 2022).

Respondent was adjudicated delinquent under these provisions after a short bench trial, at which

the juvenile court found, in sum, that he tossed a loaded handgun into the street while fleeing on

foot from the police. (For whatever reason, the court did not formally merge the two counts, but

it did render a single disposition of 1-year on juvenile probation.)

¶5     In the wake of District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008), and McDonald v.

City of Chicago, 561 U.S. 742 (2010), the state and federal courts “coalesced” around a two-part

test for evaluating the constitutionality of a firearm regulation under the second amendment. See

Bruen, 142 S. Ct. at 2125. Our supreme court adopted its version of this test in Wilson v. County

of Cook, 2012 IL 112026.

¶6     In the first step of the Wilson analysis, the court conducts a “textual and historical

inquiry” to determine whether the challenged law regulates conduct that was understood to fall

within the scope of the second amendment’s protections at the time of ratification. Id. ¶ 41. If the

regulated conduct falls outside the scope of the amendment, it is categorically unprotected. Id.

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No. 1-23-1033

¶7      If the historical evidence suggests that the regulated conduct is not categorically

unprotected, or if that evidence is inconclusive, the analysis proceeds to a second step, in which

the court evaluates “ ‘the strength of the government’s justification for restricting or regulating

the exercise of Second Amendment rights.’ ” Id. ¶ 42 (quoting Ezell v. City of Chicago, 651 F.3d

684, 702-03 (7th Cir. 2011)). Whatever level of scrutiny is applied—strict, intermediate, or

rational basis review—this inquiry is known, in general, as “means-end scrutiny.” Bruen, 142 S.

Ct. at 2127.

¶8      The prevailing two-step inquiry was “one step too many” for Bruen, which held that

means-end scrutiny does not apply to the second amendment. Id. “Instead, the government must

affirmatively prove that its firearm regulation is part of the historical tradition that delimits the

outer bounds of the right to keep and bear arms.” Id. The inquiry thus begins with the threshold

question whether the “Second Amendment’s plain text covers an individual’s conduct.” Id. at

2129-30. If so, the amendment “presumptively protects that conduct,” and “[t]he government

must then justify its regulation by demonstrating that it is consistent with the Nation’s historical

tradition of firearm regulation.” Id. at 2130. Full stop.

¶9      This is just an elaboration of what the lower courts had been doing in “[s]tep one of the

predominant framework.” Id. at 2127. After Bruen, this textual and historical inquiry is always

dispositive. But even before Bruen, our supreme court found it dispositive, anyway, whenever

the challenged law regulates the possession of firearms by people under the age of 21. The laws

challenged here have never been justified by application of the means-end scrutiny that Bruen

eliminated.

¶ 10    Consider subsection (a)(3)(I) of the AUUW statute. Like 16-year-old respondent here, the

19-year-old defendant in Mosley, 2015 IL 115872, ¶¶ 5-6, was convicted under this subsection

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No. 1-23-1033

after tossing a loaded handgun on a public way while fleeing on foot from the police. He argued

that the statute violated the second amendment, both facially and as applied to a “young adult,”

namely an 18-to-20-year-old. Such young adults, he argued, are among “the People” to whom

the second amendment applies by its plain terms. The supreme court rejected this argument on

historical grounds.

¶ 11    Relying on its decision in Aguilar, 2013 IL 112116, various cases cited in Aguilar, and

thus, by extension, the historical sources cited in those cases, the supreme court held that “the

restriction on persons under the age of 21 who are not engaged in lawful hunting activities is

both historically rooted and not a core conduct subject to second amendment protection.”

Mosley, 2015 IL 115872, ¶ 37.

¶ 12    The supreme court found it unnecessary in Mosley to rehash the well-worn historical

evidence of a national tradition of firearm regulations applying to minors under 21 years of age.

Id. ¶ 36. And we will not rehash it either, except to add, by way of context, that the cutoff age of

21 has always reflected the universally recognized age of majority from the time of the founding

until well into the twentieth century. See, e.g., William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws

of England, Vol. 1 at 463 (1st ed. 1765) (“So that full age in male or female, is twenty one years

* * * who till that time is an infant, and so styled in law.”).

¶ 13    The key point is that Mosley drew the second-amendment line at age 21, and it did so

based on the historical meaning of a textual term (“the People”) and the national tradition of age-

based firearm regulation. The supreme court thus held that subsection (a)(3)(I) “passes the first

part of the Wilson analysis” and thus that “a second half analysis under Wilson”—which is to

say, means-end scrutiny—“is unnecessary.” Mosley, 2015 IL 115872, ¶ 37.

¶ 14    The only factual difference between this case and Mosley is that respondent here is 16,

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No. 1-23-1033

and thus not even what we would nowadays call a “young adult” (a category unknown to the

founding generation or, for that matter, the drafters of the fourteenth amendment, which applied

the second amendment to the states). But that fact hardly helps his cause. And lest there be any

mistake on this point, on the same day that the Mosley decision was issued, our supreme court

also issued Jordan G., 2015 IL 116834, ¶¶ 21-25, in which it rejected a 16-year-old minor’s

constitutional challenge to the same subsection of the AUUW statute. As in Mosley, this age-

based firearm regulation was upheld as “historically rooted.” Id. ¶ 25.

¶ 15   Respondent here was also convicted under subsection (a)(1) of the UPF statute. 720 ILCS

5/24-3.1(a)(1). So was the 17-year-old defendant in Aguilar, 2013 IL 112116, ¶ 25. The supreme

court held that “the possession of handguns by minors is conduct that falls outside the scope of

the second amendment’s protection.” Id. ¶ 27. And given that Aguilar was at least the proximate

source of the historical conclusions in Mosley and Jordan G., the basis for this holding should be

evident enough by now. We would just note that, in upholding this age-based firearm regulation

as historically justified, the supreme court concluded that colonial-era statutes allowing minors to

serve in certain militias did not entail a second-amendment right to bear arms. Id. ¶ 24.

¶ 16   To reiterate: our supreme court has never relied on means-end scrutiny in upholding the

challenged subsections of the AUUW and UPF statutes. Rather, it has held these sections to be

firmly justified by text and historical tradition. So the “doctrinal reset” (in appellate counsel’s

phrase) brought about by Bruen’s elimination of means-end scrutiny has no impact on these

particular statutory provisions.

¶ 17   To be sure, respondent takes issue with our supreme court’s view of the pertinent history.

To this end, he argues that “the People” means “all Americans,” regardless of age; that minors,

as young as 16, sometimes served in colonial militias; that there is no evidence of a tradition of

                                                 -5-
No. 1-23-1033

age-based firearm restrictions in this country; and other such points. Our supreme court has

heard and rejected these arguments, and its conclusions remain binding on us, even as litigation

on this topic marches on. In re A.P., 2014 IL App (1st) 140327, ¶ 25 (“as an appellate court, we

are bound to honor our supreme court’s conclusion on an issue unless and until that conclusion is

revisited by our supreme court or overruled by the United States Supreme Court” (quotation

marks and citations omitted)). Further comment from us is thus neither necessary nor

appropriate.

¶ 18    Under the binding precedents of Mosley, Jordan G., and Aguilar, respondent’s facial and

as-applied challenges to subsection (a)(3)(I) of the AUUW statute and subsection (a)(1) of the

UPF statute all fail.

¶ 19    For these reasons, the judgment of the circuit court is affirmed.

¶ 20    Affirmed.

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