Seventh Circuit Votes Against Us

Seventh Circuit Votes Against Us

The decision is here. I'm on vacation at the moment, so I'm a bit limited on my blogging.

UPDATE: In brief, the Seventh Circuit decided that because the Heller decision did not explicitly overturn U.S. v. Cruikshank (1876), Presser v. Illinois (1886), and Miller v. Texas (1894), all of which had ruled that the Second Amendment did not apply to the states, the Seventh Circuit was duty bound to continue following those precedents--even though the underlying reasoning of all three decisions is now pretty well replaced with more recent arguments. Strictly speaking, they are correct--the U.S. Supreme Court needs to explicitly overturn these bogus decisions that protected murderous Klansmen, a union busting legislature, and racist Texas police.

What I find especially irritating about the Seventh Circuit decision, however, is their insistence that the principle of federalism requires the courts to allow states to have their own laws limiting individual rights, instead of imposing a single national standard. Yes, after Roe v. Wade (1973), Lawrence v. Texas (2003), Romer v. Evans (1996), Cleburne v. Cleburne Living Center (1985), Loving v. Virginia (1967), and dozens of other cases where the Supreme Court has done exactly that--and often without any explicit constitutional language protecting the right that the Court has found hiding in obscure places that no one else could find.

Oh yes: self-defense isn't a constitutional right, either, to this court.