(The Center Square) – Whether commercially available semi-automatic rifles now banned in Illinois are common or too similar to military grade firearms was the focus of Day 2 of the bench trial of Illinois’ gun and magazine ban.
On preliminary grounds, the Seventh Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals ruled in favor of the state last year, saying commercially available rifles that Illinois banned in January 2023 are too similar to military grade rifles and are able to be regulated.
Now up for final judgment in the Southern District of Illinois federal court, day two of the bench trial was dominated by James Ronkainen, a former longtime engineer and director of firearms development and production for Remington. He said there are material differences between modern sporting rifles and military spec firearms.
Plaintiffs’ attorney Thomas Maag explained the impact of his testimony.
“The witness explained correctly that there is a distinction in the AR-15 and the M16 lower receivers and internal parts,” Maag said after court adjourned for the day Tuesday. “You cannot simply put fully automatic parts in a run of the mill semi-automatic AR-15.”
He said he’s never seen a modified AR-15 “in the wild.”
Ronkainen testified modifying an AR-15 to be full auto would be illegal by federal law and would be dangerous as military spec burst and full auto firearms are built with different and more durable components than commercially available semi-automatic only firearms. He also said he never had any military contract ask for AR-15 or similar semi-automatic only systems, or any AR-15 with bumpstocks or trigger cranks, devices that speed up the rate of fire for semi-automatic firearms.
Litigants also discussed with Ronkainen various reports from the ATF about the numbers of manufactured rifles from more than 80 different manufacturers. The numbers of semi-automatic firearms was illusive as the ATF reports don’t indicate the difference between a bolt action and semi-automatic rifle, but Ronkainen said just by reviewing numbers from manufacturers that only make modern sporting rifles, there are hundreds of thousands of them produced each year.
Maag said that shows how common such rifles are, and they’re not only for police.
“As the witness enunciated, if law enforcement are buying all of these firearms, there would be no room in their police stations or their cars to store them all,” Maag said.
The state as defendants highlighted in cross examination Ronkainen hasn’t worked for Remington since around 2017 and is now a consultant for the firearms industry, including the National Shooting Sports Foundation.
During cross examination of Ronkainen, the state drilled into the difference between military spec and civilian firearms when considering pounds of pressure to pull the trigger. For military, Ronkainen said the pounds of pressure is higher, or around 6 lbs of pressure, to ensure there is no unintentional trigger pulls. For civilian firearms, the pressure could be as low as 2.5 lbs of pressure.
When the state asked if that means it would take 90 lbs of pressure to fire a 30 round magazine from a civilian firearm, the plaintiffs objected saying that was wrong. The state said it wanted to show the difference in level of fatigue in rapidly firing a civilian firearm versus a military firearm. Ronkainen said that is immaterial.
“I’m not sure the defense understood what a trigger pull was, but overall with what they got I think they did as well as they could,” Maag said.
The state has their chance to bring witnesses to testify as early as Wednesday, when the trial resumes in East St. Louis.
