Judge Diane Wood Goes Hard Left

Some of you local readers will recall Judge Diane Sykes (Charlie Sykes' #2 or #3 wife) as a solid Conservative.

N.B.:  Judge Wood is NOT an ex-wife of Charlie Sykes.  Diane Sykes is his ex (and the Chief Justice of the 7th.)  Judge Wood is merely another Lefty Wacko.

Well.......like ol' Charlie, she's gone to the dark side.

On Friday, a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit overturned an injunction against Illinois’ “assault weapons” ban, deciding that AR-15s are not protected by the Second Amendment....

 ...The three judges were Ronald Reagan appointee Frank Easterbook, Bill Clinton appointee Diane P. Wood, and Donald Trump appointee Michael P. Brennan....

The reasoning here is composed of "what if" suppositions and uses the logic of the Gun Control crowd.

 ...Easterbrook and Wood constituted the panel majority in overturning the injunction. They noted that Heller (2008) held, “[l]ike most rights, the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited.”

They went on to note that in Heller, the Supreme Court of the United States found that machine guns were not protected under the Second Amendment because they were not “bearable” arms, and that is “because they can be dedicated exclusively to military use.”...

That is a most peculiar claim.  Are the judges ignorant of arms such as the Biretta 1938, the MP40, and the MP43?  All of them are easily "bearable" by one man or woman and were used to great effect during WWII.

But even more odd is that the judges found the AR to be a "machine gun" in the first place.  They began by observing that the AR and the M16 are alike.

...we take into account how easy it is to modify the AR-15 by adding a “bump stock” (as the shooter in the 2017 Las Vegas event had done) or auto-sear to it, thereby making it, in essence, a fully automatic weapon. In a decision addressing a ban on bump stocks enacted by the Maryland legislature, another federal court found that bump-stock devices enable “rates of fire between 400 to 800 rounds per minute.” ...

The 1960's Chevy 327 was used in Granny's Impala with its rated 250HP.  Granny's nephew had a 327 in his Bel Air which he modified to produce 350HP for drag racing his car.  Does that make Granny's 327 a drag race engine?

The logic used by Wood and Easterbrook is grievously flawed; their "machine gun" is only so if there is a malevolent actor who modifies it.  IOW, they bought the Big Lie of the Gun Control crowd that the weapon in itself is evil, not the person using it.

We expect that this will be adjudged by the entire Circuit on appeal, and it will wind up in SCOTUS, although SCOTUS has indirectly taken up the case already:

The "bump-stock makes it a machine gun" argument will be decided by SCOTUS this term.  Note that the language of Congress was .....ahhhh.......adjusted.......by BATF grundoons to fit their gun-ban purpose; the "adjustment" authority of BATF is being challenged in this case.  The "adjusted" language was used by Pritzker/Illinois in their ban legislation; without that adjustment, the Pritzker ban is probably void. 

More on the BATF 'adjustment' lawsuit here.

This is a good time to acquire an AR.  Light, accurate, easy to handle.  A very good small-to-medium game hunting piece!