×

Marion County State’s Attorney Tim Hudspeth along with the State’s Attorney’s in Clinton, Washington, Jefferson and Clay Counties are among 35 State’s Attorneys in Illinois filing a friend of the court brief asking that the U.S. Court of Appeals Seventh Circuit to find the state’s ban on assault weapons unconstitutional.

Madison County State’s Attorney Tom Haines is the lead attorney.  He’s asking that an earlier decision handed down by the Federal Court in East St. Louis that would overturn the law should be allowed to stand.  Hudspeth also joined in a friend of the court filing in that case.

Haines noted in the brief that state’s attorneys have a duty to ensure that the laws they enforce are constitutional and says that the weapons affected by the ban are common and overwhelmingly used for self-defense and recreation, while accounting for only a “tiny portion” of violent crime in Illinois and the United States.