Courtesy of MSNBC.com

WASHINGTON - The National Rifle Association is asking the Supreme Court to strike down strict gun control laws in the Chicago area, setting the stage for another high court battle over Second Amendment protections for gun owners.

The NRA wants the court to rule that last year's gun rights decision invalidating a handgun ban in the District of Columbia applies as well to local and state laws.

The appeal to the Supreme Court comes almost immediately after a federal appeals court in Chicago said Tuesday that it is bound by earlier Supreme Court decisions which held the Second Amendment applies only to federal laws. Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor was part of an appeals court panel in New York that reached a similar conclusion in January.

Judges on both courts — Republican nominees in Chicago and Democratic nominees in New York — said only the Supreme Court could decide whether to extend last year's ruling throughout the country. Many, but not all, of the constitutional protections in the Bill of Rights have been applied to cities and states.

The framers of the Constitution intended "to protect the right to keep and bear arms and other rights from state infringement," the NRA said in a filing made available at the court Thursday.

It is hard to imagine a situation where a state would put restrictions on the freedom of speech, or the freedom from illegal search and seizure, or most any of the other individual rights guaranteed by our Bill of Rights and have that restriction upheld at the Supreme Court level, but that is exactly what is being discussed here. These follow up cases to the Heller ruling will be crucial in establishing much about our Constitution even beyond the Second Amendment.

Also from the article:

In the case now pending at the Supreme Court, the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld ordinances barring the ownership of handguns in most cases in Chicago and suburban Oak Park, Ill.

Judge Frank Easterbrook said that "the Constitution establishes a federal republic where local differences are to be cherished as elements of liberty rather than extirpated in order to produce a single, nationally applicable rule."

"Federalism is an older and more deeply rooted tradition than is a right to carry any particular kind of weapon," Easterbrook wrote.

Someone pointed out to me that asking for the Second Amendment to apply to the states and locales went against my "anti-big government" leanings. I immediately searched my desktop for a very hard, very heavy copy of the Constitution to hit that person over the head with. Both they and Judge Easterbrook are obviously missing the point of our Constitution, which is not to establish a heavy handed set of rules that apply to all, but to establish liberties of the individual and place restrictions on government. The Second Amendment is an important (arguably the most important) part of those limits on government, and those limits should be enjoyed by all Americans equally no matter where they reside.