7th Circuit declares AR-15s not protected by Second Amendment

Using a dubious precedent, the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals decided on Friday that AR-15 rifles are not protected by the Second Amendment, overturning a previous injunction against Illinois' "assault weapons" ban.

The three-judge panel voted 2-1 to effectively reinstitute the ban, citing the Heller case (2008) as a precedent for limiting the Second Amendment.

Heller stated that machine guns were not protected under the Second Amendment, and the 7th Circuit apparently decided that AR-15s are machine guns.

In fact, AR-15s are only semi-automatic and don't fall into the machine gun category, but one should not expect federal judges to understand these nuances.

The judges actually admitted in their ruling that AR-15s are only similar to machine guns like M-16s if they are modified by "auto-searing" or adding a bump stock, which makes the gun fully automatic. Yet they still want to allow the weapons to be banned even if they aren't modified.

Surely the Supreme Court will not let this ridiculousness stand.