Brown v. City of Chicago

• Decision Date: 28 May 1969
• Docket Number: No. 41550,41550
• Citation: 250 N.E.2d 129,42 Ill.2d 501
• Parties: Joseph I. BROWN, Jr., et al., Appellants, v. The CITY OF CHICAGO et al., Appellees.
• Court: Illinois Supreme Court

Page 129

250 N.E.2d 129

42 Ill.2d 501

Joseph I. BROWN, Jr., et al., Appellants, v. The CITY OF CHICAGO et al., Appellees.

No. 41550.

Supreme Court of Illinois.

May 28, 1969.

L. Louis Karton, Chicago, for appellants.

Raymond F. Simon, Corp. Counsel, Chicago (Marvin E. Aspen and Robert J. Collins, Asst. Corp. Counsel, Edmund Hatfield, Chicago, Ill., of counsel), for appellees.

KLINGBIEL, Justice.

This case involves the constitutional validity of two Chicago ordinances regulating the possession of firearms and requiring their registration. Three individuals and a sporting goods store brought suit in the circuit court of Cook County to enjoin the City and its officials from enforcing them. On motion of defendants the complaint was stricken and the cause dismissed. Plaintiffs appeal.

The ordinances became effective April 15, 1968, and appear as Chapters 11.1 and 11.2 of the Municipal Code of Chicago, Chapter 11.1 pertains to the registration of firearms. It requires detailed records to be kept when a firearm is sold or given away, including full identification of the firearm as well as the person to whom it is sold or given. A registration form must be completed and mailed to the office of the city collector within 48 hours. Persons who have acquired their firearms prior to the date of the ordinances are also required to register possession. The city collector is then to forward to the possessor or purchaser a registration certificate with full identifying information, which must be carried with the firearm and exhibited on request of any police officer. Certain classes of persons are declared ineligible to register, including minors under 18-years-of-age, narcotic addicts, felons, and mental defectives, and all such persons are forbidden to have firearms. Chapter 11.2, relating to the possession of guns, makes it unlawful for any person to carry a rifle, shotgun, or other firearm except in his home or place of business. The chapter is made inapplicable to peace officers and other authorized classes enumerated therein.

To sustain their charge of invalidity plaintiffs employ a 'shotgun' technique, alleging a dozen different grounds therefor in addition to claiming that the ordinances will not achieve their object of reducing crime. In substance the principal contentions are that the City lacks power to legislate with regard to gun control because the State has pre-empted the field, that the ordinances violate the provisions of the Federal constitution concerning the right of the people to keep and bear arms, that they are vague, confusing and inconsistent with the statute on the subject, that they unlawfully delegate legislative power to the city collector and contravene the doctrine of separation of powers, and that they constitute an unreasonable exercise of police power.

With regard to the first contention it is suggested that whatever power the City had to regulate firearms has been repealed by implication by an act effective July 1, 1968. (Ill.Rev.Stat.1967, ch. 38, par. 83--1 et seq.) The argument is without merit. The statute does not require the registration of weapons, as does the Chicago registration ordinance. Rather it deals with registration of the individual owner of firearms. Its declared purpose merely is 'to provide a system of identifying persons who are not qualified to acquire or possess firearms and firearm ammunition * * *.' (Ill.Rev.Stat.1967, ch. 38, par. 83--1.) Unlike the registration certificate for which the ordinance provides, the identification cards required by the Act do not even refer to or identify particular weapons. There is no inconsistency or repugnancy between the two, and the legislature has not pre-empted the field of gun control. As this court said in Kizer v. City of Mattoon, 332 Ill. 545, 549, 164 N.E. 20, 22: 'While municipal ordinances must be in harmony with the general laws of the state, and in case of a conflict the ordinance must give way, the mere fact that the state has legislated upon a subject does not necessarily deprive a city of power to deal with the subject by ordinance. Police regulations enacted by a city under a general grant of power may differ from those of the state upon the same subject, provided they are not inconsistent therewith.' See, also Chicago Cosmetic Co. v. City of Chicago, 374 Ill. 384, 29 N.E.2d 495.

Also invoked is the second amendment to the United States constitution, which says that '(a) well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.' Contentions that this right precludes firearm regulation and control have been answered both in this State (Biffer v. City of Chicago, 278 Ill. 562, 116 N.E. 182), and, more recently, elsewhere. (Burton v. Sills, 53 N.J. 86, 248 A.2d 521.) They need not be dealt with again here. As the opinion in the Burton case points out, regulation which does not impair the maintenance of the State's active, organized militia is not in violation of either the terms or the purposes of the second amendment.

Plaintiffs argue that the definition of 'firearms' in the ordinances is broader than the one in the statute, and that even though a person obeys all the requirements of the latter he will not necessarily be protected thereby from prosecution for violating the ordinances. This does not constitute a valid objection. As we have indicated, the statute and the ordinances have differing objectives. Nor is there merit in objections that the definition includes parts of a weapon, that the ordinances are vague and indefinite, that they duplicate other ordinances, that they are inconsistent with statutes on the...