A blatant case of judicial activism, Chicago-style

A three-judge panel of the Seventh U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that the city of Chicago can indeed ban handguns within its limits, even though that ruling is in direct opposition with the Supreme Court's recent Heller decision.

The panel seems to have found that Chicago's draconian outlawing of self-defense weapons does not violate Heller because they have concluded that Washington, D.C. is a federal zone to which the Constitution apparently applies solely, and that the state of Illinois is, well, a state, and as such its citizens enjoy no guaranteed Second Amendment rights.

To make sure we've got this sort of thinking straight, abortion was deemed legal in all 50 states based on some nebulous "privacy" right some justice magically "found" in the Constitution, but an enumerated natural right (specifically protected by that same document, by the way) doesn't restrain a given state at all from completely banning the free exercise of that right?

Following their tortured logic to its natural conclusion and to maintain a consistent legal theory, one has to now believe that these judges also would find that the First Amendment does not carry any authority over states, and that Illinois is now free to ban newspapers that publish unpopular opinions or jail publishers that annoy its lawmakers. Additionally, can state and local police forces now decide that they are free to enter a private home without a shred of evidence of criminal activity, despite what the Fourth Amendment plainly states?

Of course not, which is why this asinine decision will be rocketed to the top of the Supreme Court docket should the full Seventh Circuit decline to hear the case. Hopefully it will be heard before Judge Sonia Sotomayor, who seems to favor these sorts of ludicrous "policy-making" rulings, gets confirmed, as now seems to be inevitable.