“Suppressor Rights Denied” – Another Court Rules Against Gun Owners

On September 5, 2025, U.S. District Judge David W. Dugan upheld Illinois’s outright ban on firearm suppressors in Morse v. Raoul, concluding that suppressors are not protected “arms” under the Second Amendment. Duncan Johnson at AmmoLand warns that this isn’t just about one piece of metal; it’s about how narrowly courts can define the very thing the Constitution protects – “arms.” 

Meanwhile, attorney William Kirk at Washington Gun Law calls the decision a “crushing defeat,” noting the court dismissed the case on the pleadings before evidence could be developed. I think they’re both right to sound the alarm.

The Case: What Was Really At Stake

As Johnson reports, Illinois criminalizes owning or possessing any device that muffles a firearm’s report. The Morse plaintiffs weren’t trying to sneak around federal law; they were prepared to run the ATF gauntlet and pay the tax stamp. Their claim was straightforward: suppressors are safety tools that facilitate lawful self-defense and responsible gun use – protecting hearing, reducing noise pollution, and even aiding accuracy in defensive contexts – so a categorical state ban violates the Second Amendment. Put simply, if the Amendment protects bearable arms used for self-defense, it should also protect modern tools that make that defense safer and more effective.

Illinois’s Counter: “Accessories, Not Arms”

The State, led by Attorney General Kwame Raoul, told the court suppressors aren’t “arms” at all. In that telling, they are no different from sights, stocks, or earmuffs – useful, maybe, but not essential to discharging a firearm. Johnson emphasizes that Illinois framed the entire constitutional question around nomenclature: if a device doesn’t itself project force, it sits outside the Second Amendment’s ambit. That framing matters because once a court accepts “accessory” status, the constitutional analysis typically ends before it begins.

Judge Dugan’s Line In The Sand

Judge Dugan leaned on Heller and Bruen’s emphasis on “bearable arms” and their historical meaning. He acknowledged modern technology (like stun guns) can be protected when it serves the core purpose of self-defense. But he drew a bright line at suppressors: they are not weapons, do not themselves cast or project force, and therefore are not “arms” in the constitutional sense. He discounted the National Firearms Act’s statutory choice to define suppressors as “firearms,” stressing that Congress’s labels don’t control constitutional meaning. He cited similar rulings from the Fifth and Ninth Circuits to bolster the conclusion. Result: ban upheld, case dismissed.

The Threshold Question: What Counts As “Arms”?

Here’s where Johnson pushes back. In AmmoLand, he argues that Bruen doesn’t limit “arms” to the bare weapon; it extends to modern tools that facilitate armed self-defense. Suppressors and magazines both fail the “they don’t fire bullets” test – and yet magazines are widely treated as covered by the Second Amendment. 

I agree with Johnson that the court’s reasoning is uncomfortably selective: it wraps itself in historical meaning for “arms,” but then takes a decidedly modern, utilitarian view to minimize items obviously tied to safe, effective use. It’s a definition crafted to exclude.

Kirk’s Take: A Case Tossed Before Facts

William Kirk, in his Washington Gun Law analysis, underscores the procedural sting: the court granted a Rule 12(b)(6) motion – finding, as a matter of law, that plaintiffs didn’t even state a plausible claim. Translation: even if everything they alleged about suppressors’ safety and popularity is true, it doesn’t matter because suppressors aren’t “arms.” 

Kirk quotes the opinion’s throughline: since suppressors “do not cast or strike another, do not contain or feed or project ammunition, and do not serve any intrinsic self-defense purpose,” they aren’t entitled to Second Amendment “quarter.” It’s a door slammed shut at step one, without historical testing, evidence, or a trial.

Heller, Bruen, And A Fixed Past For A Changing World

Kirk notes the opinion’s heavy reliance on Heller’s “bearable arms” definition and Bruen’s insistence on a historically “fixed” meaning. The court’s logic: if suppressors lacked a founding-era analogue, the Framers couldn’t have understood them as “arms.” But that logic collides with Caetano, where the Supreme Court recognized modern stun guns as protected arms because they serve the same lawful purpose as their ancestors – self-defense. If function can bridge the historical gap for stun guns, it’s fair to ask why function cannot do the same for suppressors that measurably reduce the harms of defensive gun use. Kirk flags that contradiction; I think it’s the opinion’s soft spot.

The Magazine And Microphone Analogy

Johnson makes another point I find persuasive: constitutional rights protect the tools used to exercise them. The First Amendment didn’t calcify at pamphlets and town criers; it shelters microphones, printing presses, and social media. Likewise, the Second Amendment shouldn’t blink out at iron sights and bare muzzles. Without optics, stocks, and suppressors, a firearm can “function” in the strictest sense – but less safely and less effectively, especially in confined spaces like homes where hearing damage and disorientation are real risks. If the core is self-defense, why hobble the tools that make that defense safer?

A Narrowing That Doesn’t Stop At Suppressors

Both Johnson and Kirk warn that this arms/accessories line could migrate. If the test becomes “not essential to make it go bang,” then the list of bannable items is long: stocks, optics, braces, night sights, even standard-capacity magazines (which courts already target). Kirk cautions that other states – he name-checks the Pacific Northwest – will take note. Johnson calls the accessory-carve-out “absurd,” because it turns the core right into a minimalist permission slip: yes, you can own a gun; no, you can’t optimize it for safe, effective self-defense. That’s not how we treat other enumerated rights, and it shouldn’t be how we treat this one.

The Court’s Concession – And Why It Rings Hollow

To its credit, Judge Dugan’s opinion concedes some attachments might be so integral to a firearm’s effective operation that they count as “arms.” But suppressors, he says, aren’t among them because guns can be used “effectively” without them. Kirk notes the practical contradiction: the court accepts as true that suppressors are popular among law-abiding citizens, are rarely used in crime, and can make defensive use safer, then shrugs those facts off as constitutionally irrelevant at step one. That disconnect – acknowledging value while denying coverage – felt like a policy judgment masquerading as a definitional one. And policy judgments, under Bruen, aren’t supposed to drive the analysis.

What’s Next: Uphill Appeal

Johnson reports the plaintiffs intend to appeal, though the path through the Seventh Circuit will be steep. If the panel embraces this arms/accessories dichotomy, a circuit split may eventually ripen for the Supreme Court – especially given Caetano’s rationale and post-Bruen turbulence nationwide. Kirk, for his part, argues the Court will need to step in at some point to rein in lower-court creativity that “fixes” the definition of arms, yet flexes it when convenient. Whether that happens soon is anyone’s guess, but the longer the Court waits, the more entrenched the split-the-Second jurisprudence becomes.

Safety Tools Aren’t Second-Class

Here’s where I land after reading Johnson and Kirk. Bruen tells courts to start with text and history, not interest balancing. Fine, start there. History shows that Americans have always adapted arms to their needs, adding tools to shoot straighter, faster, and safer. The functional test the Court used for stun guns should apply here: do suppressors facilitate lawful self-defense today the way historical accoutrements did then? Yes. They reduce blast, concussion, and hearing loss – the exact harms most likely to befall the defender and their family in a home. 

If a court wants to say a state can regulate suppressors, that’s one debate. But calling them non-arms to avoid the Second Amendment entirely feels like an end-run around the text. As Johnson underscores, you wouldn’t ban microphones and tell speakers to “just shout.” As Kirk emphasizes, you shouldn’t end the case at the doorway before facts are tested. On both counts, this ruling misses the mark.