Major Second Amendment victory as Chicago unbans gun ranges

How about a change of pace for a bit? In legal news not related in any way to the case involving President Donald J. Trump’s very lawful and proper travel ban of persons from seven terrorism-infested countries, Second Amendment supporters in the far-Left enclave known as Chicago just won a major court victory.

As reported by Off the Grid News, a January ruling by the U.S. Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals restored at least some sanity to the Windy City’s ridiculously strict gun laws when judges struck a city ordinance that only permitted shooting ranges in industrial sectors town.

Mind you, earlier the city had placed a complete ban on all gun ranges anywhere in the city limits, but that was dismissed as well by courts in 2010.

The lame excuses for relegating gun ranges to outlying regions? Because shooting guns causes airborne lead contamination and a risk of fire. Oh, and gun ranges attract gun thieves (though who would presume to rob an armed man is a question for Chicago city officials).

In any event, the appeals court disagreed, seeing right through the nonsensical “defense” of the ordinance. (RELATED: Find out how West Virginia protected gun rights of its citizens at Freedom.news)

“The city has provided no evidentiary support for these claims, nor has it established that limiting shooting ranges to manufacturing districts and distancing them from the multiple and various uses listed in the buffer-zone rule has any connection to reducing these risks,” the appeals court said.

Nor does the city’s logic have any connection to reality, but that’s beside the point.

In the same ruling, the court found that the city’s prohibition of persons under 18 from even entering a firing range was also unconstitutional.

“The City’s primary defense of the age-18 limitation is to argue that minors have no Second Amendment at all,” the opinion in Rhonda Ezell v. City of Chicago said. “To support this sweeping claim, the City points to some nineteenth-century state laws prohibiting firearm possession by minors and prohibiting firearm sales to minors.

“… Banning anyone under age 18 from entering a firing range prevents older adolescents and teens from accessing adult-supervised firearm instruction in the controlled setting of a range. There’s zero historical evidence that firearm training for this age group is categorically unprotected. At least the City hasn’t identified any, and we’ve found none ourselves.”

This isn’t the first time federal courts have had to slap some constitutional sense into Chicago’s anti-gunners. In 2010, in the now-historic McDonald v Chicago ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that the city’s strict ban on handgun ownership was a huge violation of the Second Amendment – a right which “shall not be infringed” upon.

As CNN reported, the ruling was an affirmation of another landmark ruling in 2008 by the high court, in which justices affirmed that the framers intended the Second Amendment to apply to individuals, not states.

“It cannot be doubted that the right to bear arms was regarded as a substantive guarantee, not a prohibition that could be ignored so long as states legislated in an evenhanded manner,” wrote Justice Samuel Alito at the time, one of the court’s constitutional “originalists,” who sees the founding document as the framer’s intended it to be interpreted. (RELATED: Find out if Trump will be the last president of a ‘united’ states at Guns.news)

And in 2014, a federal judge overturned the city’s ban on permitting licensed gun stores to operate within city limits. As the Chicago Tribune reported, U.S. District Judge Edmond Chang ruled that lawyers for the city could not argue convincingly that the ban was necessary to improve public safety.

One benefit of having elected Trump provided we can keep him in office: There are some 117 federal court vacancies currently – including one on the Supreme Court, to which President Donald Trump has nominated Neil Gorsuch. That will give him an incredible opportunity to return constitutional jurists to the federal Judiciary, which is now overrun with Left-wing judicial activists after eight years of Obama appointments.

J.D. Heyes is a senior writer for NaturalNews.com and NewsTarget.com, as well as editor of The National Sentinel.

Sources:

OffTheGridNews.com

CNN.com

ChicagoTribune.com

TheNationalSentinel.com

NaturalNews.com