Illinois another step toward legal armed self-defense; Politburo strikes back

The anti-self-defense extremists in Illinois lost another round Friday, when the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the state's request for an en banc appeal to the court's Moore v. Madigan/Shepard v. Madigan ruling, which found that the state's outright prohibition of armed self-defense in public violates the Second Amendment. From Seattle Gun Rights Examiner Dave Workman:

The Bellevue-based Second Amendment Foundation today scored another victory for concealed carry when the entire Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals let stand a December ruling by a three-judge panel that forces Illinois to adopt a concealed carry statute.

The SAF case, known as Moore v. Madigan [and which was consolidated with the NRA case of Shepard v. Madigan], was actually decided in December with Judge Richard Posner writing the majority opinion. In the process, the judge affirmed that the right to bear arms exists outside the home. That ruling now stands, leaving the Illinois legislature no alternative but to write a statute that enables citizens to carry outside the home, without a lot of red tape, for their personal protection.

Judge Posner's ruling gave the state 180 days (that puts the deadline at June 10) to replace the outright ban on armed self-defense with some other regulatory framework short of a ban. If no such law is passed in that time, then concealed and open carry would basically become unregulated, as St. Louis Gun Rights Examiner discussed before.

Dissent with the court's rejection of the appeal was actually somewhat amusing, with Judge David F. Hamilton appearing to argue that the incident in which NYPD officers shot and wounded nine innocent, unarmed citizens, while killing the actual suspect, is an argument to limit guns in public to the police:

To illustrate the dangers posed by lawful use of firearms in public, consider a deadly confrontation on the streets of New York City in August 2012, when police confronted an armed man who had just shot and killed another man. The police officers were well trained in both how to shoot and when to shoot and not shoot. The officers fatally shot the gunman, but the officer's many shots also wounded nine bystanders.

In other words, cops shooting nine innocent bystanders means that cops should be the "Only Ones" with guns.

Displeasure with the court's rejection of the appeal apparently spreads beyond Illinois. When Judge Posner's December ruling was announced, "legal scholar" Garrett Epps was nearly beside himself, and relished the possibility that the court would revisit the decision. That they have chosen not to will not sit well with the author of a book debunking the "myths" that the Constitution imposes limits on federal power, and that the Second Amendment exists to serve as the last bulwark against an out of control government.

Some Chicago area prosecutors briefly grasped at a rather puzzling straw--that a federal court (except, presumably, the Supreme Court) could not void a state law (very un-shockingly, this came out of the office of the rabidly anti-gun Cook County State's Attorney Anita Alvarez), and that Illinois is thus free to ignore the ruling. Soon, though, even virulently anti-gun Governor Pat Quinn acknowledged that Illinois is bound by the 7th Circuit Court's decision.

This leaves Illinois' forcible citizen disarmament fanatics with two choices. They could appeal the case to the United States Supreme Court (with no guarantee that SCOTUS would take the case, and with the risk that they would lose there, as well, possibly jeopardizing strict firearms carry laws in other states). Or they could try to pass a brutally restrictive carry law, which would be basically a de facto ban, despite theoretically permitting defensive firearm carry.

That second option appears to be the one that Illinois Speaker of the Politburo . . . er, I mean House Mike Madigan has chosen (although a U.S. Supreme Court appeal is still possible). According to the Illinois State Rifle Association, Madigan's HB 1155 will soon (perhaps starting today) be amended into a regulatory monstrosity that would make legal exercise of the fundamental right of armed self-defense nearly impossible.

Illinois gun rights advocates need to call their legislators and strongly "encourage" them to oppose any amendments to HB 1155 that restrict the Constitutionally guaranteed, fundamental right of the individual to keep and bear arms. Those calls need to start today.