Judge Rebecca Pallmeyer for the Northern District of Illinois just issued her memorandum opinion and order.

The gist of this is that she has ruled that grants the states motion for summary judgement.

I.e., the state wins.

Because the Seventh Circuit court affirmed that Friedman was still good law, the inferior court, the district court, could then rule for the state based on the Seventh Circuit’s opinion.

The Seventh Circuit says that it never did means-end, therefore its methodology and reasoning is just as good as Bruen.

Since both courts used “text, history, and tradition”, Friedman survives Bruen.

The Seventh Circuit used “two successive” inquires. Not Bruen‘s two-step, nor pre-Bruen means-end, two successive inquires.

The first inquiry is if the weapons regulated by the laws are “Arms” within the meaning of the Second Amendment. The second inquiry is if the regulation matches history and tradition.

This is an interesting twist of Bruen. Heller, as affirmed by Bruen says that if the regulated conduct is within the scope of the Second Amendment, the conduct is presumptively protected. This means that the conduct must be keeping or bearing arms and the regulation must infringe or hinder that conduct. This includes ancillary rights.

Just as —Minneapolis Star & Tribune Co. V. Minnesota Commissioner of Revenue, 75 L. Ed. 2d 295 (1983) found that taxing ink was a first amendment infringement, so does regulating parts of firearms or ammunition.

So here is the supposed logic of the Seventh Circuit Court. The plain text should not be interpreted as “arms” but of “bearable arms”. “Bearable arms” in turn are weapons in common use for lawful purposes. “Lawful purposes” is the right to individual self-defense” “Individual self-defense” only includes arms that ordinary people would keep at home for the purpose of self-defense, not weapons predominantly useful in military service. “Predominantly useful in military service” means anything that the military uses or is likely to use, or which looks like or might function like a military issue weapon.

Thus, only non-scary weapons are protected by the Second Amendment.

The plaintiffs (good guys) must prove that the “arm” is not like a military arm.

Is it a firearm? Then it is an arm. Do the plaintiffs wish to keep or bear that arm? Then it is presumptively protected by the Second Amendment, and the burden shifts to the government to prove a history and tradition of regulations that are a close match to the current regulation.

One of the interesting things that comes out of these rogue inferior courts is the claim that using text, history, and tradition as the Supreme Court would cause other gun control legislation to fall. Since that can’t be the intention of the Supreme Court because the Supreme Court, in Heller didn’t tear down the GCA of 1968.

Ignoring Heller, where the court found that having other means of self-defense did not allow an infringement of handguns, the Seventh explicitly said that if a subject wanted a 30 round magazine, they could just buy 3 10 round magazines.

The District Court wrote The court follows Seventh Circuit precedent even if it believes those decisions are wrong or mistaken. that might be true, but I do not, for one second, believe that the district court actually cares if the Circuit got it right, as long as she can side with the state.

This order granting a win for the state is a big nothingburger. The District court was not going to issue an opinion that wasn’t appealed. I believe that this case is already on its way to the Supreme Court. One of the cases that is attempting to skip the Circuit courts.

The only thing that might happen is the case is forced through the Seventh Circuit again. Only this time, because this case has a summary judgement which is final, the Seventh cannot vacate and remand unless they find for the plaintiffs.

This judge was a coward. They added nothing. All that happened is that they said, “The boss told me to do it!” and then attempted to wash their hands of repsonsiblity.