In an unexpected twist of judicial ruling a federal judge decided that Chicago’s blanket ban on firearm transfers wasn’t constitutional:
A federal judge ruled Monday that Chicago’s ban on virtually all sales and transfers of firearms is unconstitutional.
“The stark reality facing the City each year is thousands of shooting victims and hundreds of murders committed with a gun. But on the other side of this case is another feature of government: certain fundamental rights are protected by the Constitution, put outside government’s reach, including the right to keep and bear arms for self-defense under the Second Amendment,” wrote U.S. District Judge Edmond Chang.
“Chicago’s ordinance goes too far in outright banning legal buyers and legal dealers from engaging in lawful acquisitions and lawful sales of firearms,” he continued.
Of course this ruling, like most judicial rulings, won’t prevent Chicago from maintaining a blanket ban so long as it finds another way of doing it:
Chang explicitly did not rule out other types of regulation, short of a complete ban, in order to “minimize the access of criminals to firearms and to track the ownership of firearms.
Overly complicated testing and regulation for dealers, exorbitant permit fees, a cap on the number of authorized dealers within city limits, and many other options are still on the table. And one or more of those options will be used because there is no way the oligarchs of Chicago are going to allow their hard on for gun control to whither. But that’s how the illusion is maintained. Courts hand out rulings that appear to favor the people but always leave exceptions that allow the oligarchs to continue doing what they were doing. Then the cases go back to court where another ruling that looks to favor the people will eventually be made to continue the cycle.