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.

So it begins. Yesterday, Attorney General Eric Holder announced the administration's intention to renew the 1994 Clinton Assault Weapons Ban.

It is not a surprise, since Joe Biden was one of the authors of the original bill, which still stands as one of the most useless pieces of legislation in the history of legislation...and that's saying alot.

What is even more galling, however, isn't just the reintroduction of the ban. This has been expected by most firearms owners, to be honest. We knew toward the end of the campaign when Obama looked dead into a t.v. camera and said, "Look, I'm not going to take your guns," that he was lying through his teeth. He has to give the far left voters something, and this looks like a gimme.

What's really galling is the how, when and why of the announcement:

Holder said that putting the ban back in place would not only be a positive move by the United States, it would help cut down on the flow of guns going across the border into Mexico, which is struggling with heavy violence among drug cartels along the border.

"I think that will have a positive impact in Mexico, at a minimum." Holder said at a news conference on the arrest of more than 700 people in a drug enforcement crackdown on Mexican drug cartels operating in the U.S.

A positive impact in Mexico? Now we're seriously considering trampling the Constitution of the United States of America because Mexico can't take care of its own problems? Seriously? And the words "at a minimum" are especially ridiculous. He just basically acknowledged this ban has no real purpose, except it might do some good for Mexico. Maybe. We're now pissing on the Constitution because it might help out the Mexicans.

That is not the minimum, Mr. Holder, that is the maximum and you damn well know it. Anyone who's ever looked at the real math behind the original AWB knows it was a spurious piece of legislation. Traditionally, the rates of assault weapons used in violent crimes have run around 1/5th of 1% (.2%). The ban had absolutely no measurable effect on violent crime in the United States.

Then why bring it up now? Several reasons come to mind:

1) The administration has to look like it's doing something about the border problem.

2) The administration is not going to be able to carry through on many of the promises that it made to the more radical leftists of the country to garner votes, and as I said before, this looks like an easy measure to push over to show that the lefties got some return on investment.

3) It is a quintessential stepping stone. As the Washington Post said about the original ban back in '94:

No one should have any illusions about what was accomplished (by the ban). Assault weapons play a part in only a small percentage of crime. The provision is mainly symbolic; its virtue will be if it turns out to be, as hoped, a stepping stone to broader gun control.

Of course, no one should be surprised at any of this coming from the mouth of Eric Holder. He is primed to easily surpass Janet Reno as the biggest joke of an Attorney General this nation has ever had. As someone who's lawfirm represented 17 Guantanamo Bay detainees and who's former law firm partner represented the mastermind of the USS Cole bombing, we shouldn't be surprised that his legal philosophies are firmly rooted pretty far to the left of the center aisle. His confirmation shows that when it comes to the Constitution, this administration is only interested in upholding the rights of a specific segment of this nation's citizens.

Battle lines are forming, and Americans who screamed bloody murder about the Patriot Act and the treatment of foreign terrorists who wish nothing more than the obliteration of this nation are now going to stand aside and watch real, tangible assaults on our real liberties happen. Hope and change has quickly been replaced with rhetoric and fear mongering. The words of Samuel Adams in 1776 have never been truer than now:

The warm sunshine of influence would melt down the virtue which the violence of the storm rendered more firm and unyielding. In a state of tranquillity, wealth, and luxury, our descendants would forget the arts of war and the noble activity and zeal which made their ancestors invincible. Every art of corruption would be employed to loosen the bond of union which renders our resistance formidable. When the spirit of liberty, which now animates our hearts and gives success to our arms, is extinct, our numbers will accelerate our ruin and render us easier victims to tyranny. Ye abandoned minions of an infatuated ministry, if peradventure any should yet remain among us, remember that a Warren and Montgomery are numbered among the dead. Contemplate the mangled bodies of your countrymen, and then say, What should be the reward of such sacrifices? Bid us and our posterity bow the knee, supplicate the friendship, and plow, and sow, and reap, to glut the avarice of the men who have let loose on us the dogs of war to riot in our blood and hunt us from the face of the earth? If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquillity of servitude than the animating contest of freedom--go from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains sit lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.

The spirit of liberty is something we must recapture as a nation, and before it is too late and our chains do not sit so lightly upon us.