In January, the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals struck down the myriad regulations Chicago had put in place ensuring that no one dared put a gun range in the Windy City. They then kicked everything backed to the lower court for implementation. The Windy City lived up to its moniker . . .

and jawboned the lower court about a delay of 180 days before the order was implemented. They said the time was needed to allow the city to “research and enact new zoning rules.” I suppose using Microsoft Word to apply ‘strikethrough’ formatting to text can be tricky.

The city of Chicago argued it was owed this much, since this is how much the entire state of Illinois got when the 7th Circuit put the kibosh on the Land of Lincoln’s ban on any carrying of pistols by regular ordinary citizens in the 2013 case Moore v. Madigan.

The lower court asked both parties to file arguments over this request, and scheduled a status conference on the matter for April 25, seventy-six days after the 7th Circuit’s order was to go in to effect on February 8.

In the meantime, they haven’t officially issued their final order in the matter yet as commanded to by the Appellate Court.

The Plaintiff in the matter, Rhonda Ezell (above), wasn’t having any of that. Through her attorneys, Alan Gura and David Sigale, she moved the 7th Circuit for a Writ of Mandamus, essentially asking the higher court to tell its lower court brethren to do their jobs already and issue a final judgment in the matter instead of wasting time.

The Appeals Court was not pleased about Chicago’s 180-day stay idea.

Our decision concluded with the mandate language typically used in this situation: We remanded and directed the district court to issue an injunction “consistent with this opinion.”

Ezell II was released on January 18, 2017. Although we could have stayed the mandate to give the City a period of time to promulgate new regulations to replace the unconstitutional provisions, we did not do so.

That was not an oversight…. Chicago has no publicly accessible firing ranges at present. Firing ranges do not open overnight. Myriad practical considerations and the current state of the City’s regulatory scheme ensure that it will be some time before any range operator approaches the City with a viable proposal to open a firing range….

[T]he invalidation of the manufacturing‐district and buffer‐zone restrictions puts “the ball squarely in the City’s court to decide which districts it will now open to firing ranges and on what terms.”

Moreover, the City has “a host of [additional] regulations to guard against environmental and fire hazards and otherwise ensure that shooting ranges will be properly constructed, maintained, and operated.”

Under these circumstances, the temporary regulatory vacuum created by the invalidation of these three regulations entails none of the exigencies that justified the decision to stay the mandate in Moore v. Madigan.

Despite that, however, the 7th Circuit denied Ms. Ezell’s petition on purely technical grounds: she didn’t ask the lower court to enforce the order first. Things must be done in the right order, I suppose.

But they announced that their decision was “without prejudice.” Ms. Ezell can refile at a later date should it be necessary “though,” the Appellate Court concluded, in the vernacular of Chicago, “we trust that it will not be necessary.”

To borrow from a rather infamous Chicagoan, you can get much farther with a kind word and the Appellate Court on your side than you can with just a kind word.

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59 COMMENTS

  1. The sad part is that the rifle she’s holding is illegal under the cook county “assault weapons” ban.

    • Here is what we need:
      Every time a court strikes down a rule, order, law, etc., fedzilla should promptly prosecute every person who helped institute that rule, order, law, etc. for deprivation of rights under color of law.

      • You mean like every single marriage law Republicans have tried to sneak through in the past decade? Or their regulation of facilities that provide abortions? Let’s be honest here. Both sides overplay their hand and pass a lot of laws that won’t meet muster. If such a law were to pass, the country would bankrupt itself prosecuting, and we wouldn’t have two leaders left to rub together.

      • There is no constitutional right to get married or get an abortion. Those rulings have no legitimacy and are based on a legal fiction. States should feel free to ignore them.

        • There may not be a right to get married, but there is a constitutional mandate that the law must treat everyone equally if there are going to be laws about marriage.

          Personally, I figure if some people declare before witnesses in a public organization such as a church or philosophical society or whatever that they are married, and that group accepts and records it, then they’re married and government should just STFU and duly note what the citizens have told them, and that’s all the law about marriage there should be. The only reason we ever had a fight about it was that government(s) stuck their busybody noses in in the first place.

        • The law did treat them equally. A gay man had the same right to marry a woman as a straight man.

        • Rights aren’t created by the Constitution… they’re protected by it. Just because some are not enumerated doesn’t mean they don’t exist, nor does it mean Congress or the States can violate them at will.

        • Serge, because only mainstream Christian and other Abrahamic religion’s conception of marriage matters? There have been same sex couples as long as there have been people, and other religions or non-religious groups that recognize their right to marry. Why should the .gov intervene to enforce/favor one religion’s definition over the others?

        • Because marriage is a legal status and not just a religious one. Two dudes shouldn’t get a tax break for shacking up. I would actually support removing the legal definition of marriage in the first place.

      • No, what we need is a good libertarian court that stands on fanatically for individual rights, plus a process whereby one third of either house of Congress can petition the Supremes directly to review a law before it goes into effect and damages lives.

        • So ask the court for permission to pass a law? Great idea, give over reaching courts more power that the Constitution did not grant them. Try again.

  4. Stock is too long, can’t get a proper nose-to-charging handle to use back-up sights. Oops, no back-up sights.

    Nice trigger finger discipline though! Good luck in the courts!

    • That’s a carbon fiber weave handguard. Looks like she went with as light as possible. Very nice.

    • I doubt Rhonda Ezell owns the AR pictured. The white racist hicks from ISRA & NRA that recruit black people for their lawsuits have learned how to package their plaintiffs for public relations purposes, since they conned Otis McDonald into signing on to the lawsuit against the city of Chicago.

      After the suits are won lobbyists like Todd Vandermyde come in and sell out the blacks to police unions. It’s a cycle of lies, but the shysters and lobbyists make money on the whole deal.

  5. Gee Serge I live in southern COOK COUNTY and I assure you I can own that thar evil ASSault rifle and 30round mags…

        • Why I moved the hell out of Crook County. It’s not often enforced, but the law IS on the books and you bet your ass CPD will be sitting outside every gun range to charge people when tiny dancer is finally forced to heel.

        • Oh Serge should just visit Pelchers,Chucks or Glenwood guns Simon. I see so much CLUELESS drivel. Lots of dumbazz internet gun sellers TOO…or visit Posen gun range or the new Muslim owned gun(and AR!) range on 159th in Oak Forest.

        • @pwrserge

          YES… people read them and in Illinois live and die by them. Home rule towns in Illinois (EVEN IF IN COOK COUNTY) can have their own rules. its not like the county has total supremacy like State v fed.

          Please…. those of us who live by them very often know them.

          (A former cook county resident that had PLENTY of “assault” weapons.

        • pwrserge, chicago has its own awb that overrides cook county. The funny part is it is less restrictive that Cook. I don’t know all the particulars, but they do have a 15 round limit for long guns in the city vs 10 for Cook. Also believe it or not, you can go duck hunting in the city limits

      • Wow, that is some all-encompassing “assault weapons” ban! It even bans the “shoulder thing that goes up”, as Diane Feinstein calls a muzzle shroud, in such overly-broad language that EVERY SINGLE RIFLE THAT EXISTS TODAY has what they call a “muzzle shroud”. It bans all semiautomatic rifles with forestocks, even traditional wooden stocks, bans everything except a bare barrel with no forestock! Here’s the excerpt from this law about “assault weapons rifles”, stating what is banned:

        “A shroud attached to the barrel, or that partially or completely encircles the barrel, allowing the bearer to hold the firearm with the non-trigger hand without being burned, but excluding a slide that encloses the barrel.”

        Did you notice the word “partially or completely”? Basically, it bans even ordinary wooden stocks, because every wood forestock in existence “partially or completely encircles the barrel” and allows “the bearer to hold the firearm with the non-trigger hand without being burned”!

        Aha, I see exactly what Cook County did. They took California’s (and NY and NJ) language about “assault pistols”, hit “cut and paste”, and applied it to RIFLES too, not realizing that EVERY rifle has to have a forestock “allowing the bearer to hold the firearm with the non-trigger hand without being burned”, because a rifle, by definition, has to be held by two hands without the operator being burned!

        The law is ABSURD, applying pistol rules to rifles, declaring (by legal definition) that it’s illegal to own a rifle that lets you hold it in two hands “without being burned”!

        They’ve succeeded in banning the Mini-14, M1A, SU-16, etc. that have no pistol grip, by banning all semiautomatics with forestocks and detachable magazines.
        Okay, simple solution: remove the handguard from the Mini-14 and all other semiautomatic rifles, saw off the pistol grip, and wear oven mitts, then it becomes legal! For crap’s sake, how dumb is Cook County?

        • PS: The law is even dumber than I thought. It bans semiautomatic rifles and pistols that have “A muzzle brake or muzzle compensator”, but doesn’t ban flash suppressors or threaded barrels!

          This means that when they copied the California AWB and the former Clinton AWB, they got it ass-backwards, because every other state and federal AWB banned flash suppressors and threaded barrels, but allows muzzle brakes and muzzle compensators (because muzzle brakes and muzzle compensators are widely used by hunters and competition shooters, while flash suppressors are used by the military, militias, mall ninjas, and keyboard commandos).

          It’s like they hired a dyslexic person who’s never seen a gun to copy the California AWB, but they got it all backwards! Oops, sorry, that’s unfair to dyslexic people.

  6. Writ of Mandamus – That was always my favorite Equitable Remedy. It’s sadly under-utilized IMHO.

    • After doing nothing in Illinois for forty years, the white racist NRA types from south of Joliet have accomplished a successful race hustle packaging and selling black plaintiffs for their lawsuits.

      If Alan Gura and Sigale win in court, watch and see how Rhonda Ezell gets sold out by NRA lobbyist Todd Vandermyde in Springfield. That’s what happened to Otis McDonald, the son of a sharecropper got put up as a plaintiff, then flushed down the toilet with Duty to Inform in Brandon Phelps’ concealed carry bill.

      • DTI: It’s not mandatory to inform law enforcement that you are legally carrying except if they ask then you have to disclose the location of the firearm

        • John S- Wow, you mean that you only have to give up your right to remain silent and your right to be treated as innocent until proven guilty if a cop feels like it? That’s awesome! Definitely send in your NRA life membership!

          When you get your brains blown out by a police criminal like Philando Castile in Minnesota, see if you get any help from NRA legal department.

          Right now there are over 2,000 people waiting for their concealed carry licenses, no help from NRA. They care about you though.

  8. I have some relatives in the Chicagoland area. Hopefully I’ll be able to get in some range time next time we visit. (Any word on what restrictions there will be on renting guns if you’re from out of state?)

    • Unfortunately, the FOID act means that you can’t rent jack shit. Your family may be able to and let you shoot it under their supervision, but only if they have a FOID card. Most gun stores in Illinois won’t even show you a gun until they see your FOID or CCL.

      • Well that sucks. Part of the point would be to take the ‘tives to the range so they can see that holding a gun does not immediately and automatically convert one into a xenophobic wild-eyed leadslinging drooling predatory hick. (Their words…)

        Oh, and back-woods … I forgot back-woods. I believe they also mentioned “downstate” but by that time I was laughing too hard to hear well.

        Ah, Thanksgiving with the extended family. Memories, memories.

        And, yeah, I won’t be borrowing a gun from the Chicago branch of the Consequences.

  9. “Despite that, however, the 7th Circuit denied Ms. Ezell’s petition on purely technical grounds: she didn’t ask the lower court to enforce the order first.”

    Marbury v. Madison, Part II. This time with guns!

  11. As long as the blacks mostly kill each other no one cares. The Jewish democrat mayor does not care. And the black leadership needs the gangs to vote for them. Having the chaos helps keep a Harold Washington type black mayor from being elected again in Chicago, like what happened in the late 1980s.
    The judges and the city seems happy to let more money be spent on lawyers.

    • “As long as the blacks mostly kill each other no one cares.”

      As long as police only set up and kill blacks like Philando Castile, the white ISRA & NRA members from exurbia and southern lllinois wouldn’t care if Rhonda Ezell got her brains blown out because NRA lobbyist Todd Vandermyde put Duty to Inform in Illinois’ 2013 concealed carry bill. The police unions wanted DTI to control black people in Chicago and Cook County.

      “And the black leadership needs the gangs to vote for them.”

      The only state Reps. who opposed Duty to Inform in Brandon Phelps concealed carry bill were Chicago area Black Caucus Democrats. Phelps lives in Harrisburg, forty miles from Kentucky. The ignorant racist hicks who vote for cowards like Phelps still haven’t figured out that their (good old) boy Phelps is the one who sold them out to police unions with the NRA lobbyist. Consumption of moonshine causes brain damage.

      “The judges and the city seems happy to let more money be spent on lawyers.”

      NRA did nothing in Illinois for forty years, but now they have a profitable race hustle:
      use blacks like Rhonda Ezell, Shawn Gowder, and Otis McDonald as plaintiffs, then hand over the bills to NRA lobbyist Todd Vandermyde, so he can sell them out to police unions.

      With criminal penalties for ALL violations of the carry bill, plus the new “crime” of Duty to Inform, the police, courts, and lawyers can all make money feeding off lawful gun owners. Shit bills create job security for NRA. It’s a win-win!

      • You are missing a comment on the Jewish democrat mayor. Are you covering for him???? You don’t hold him responsible????

        • I don’t know that much about Rahm Emanuel. I do know that Brandon Phelps is a squawking bitch that sold out twelve million people in Illinois to anti-gun police unions, and Todd Vandermyde is his pet rat.

          Right now Vandermyde is probably selling out every gun owner in the state in a “repeat gun offender” penalty enhancement bill, and I’m sure that Chris Cox & Chuck Cunningham at NRA/ILA have no clue what he is doing as usual. And as usual the clowntards from ISRA have no clue what deals Vandermyde is cutting behind their backs.

          Black people like Rhonda Ezell and Otis McDonald are cannon fodder for ISRA & NRA. If the rednecks cared about blacks in Chicago, they would knock out the public transportation ban in Phelps carry bill.

        • Demo Man
          Please read this. How black politicians ask for help from black gangs in Chicago. The black leaders don’t care about Otis McDonald and normal people like him. They want to stay in power. These leaders are scum. The Jewish democrat mayor is scum too.

          http://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/January-2012/Gangs-and-Politicians-An-Unholy-Alliance/

          …”The former chieftains, several of them ex-convicts, represented some of the most notorious gangs on the South and West Sides, including the Vice Lords, Gangster Disciples, Black Disciples, Cobras, Black P Stones, and Black Gangsters. Before the election, the gangs agreed to set aside decades-old rivalries and bloody vendettas to operate as a unified political force, which they called Black United Voters of Chicago. “They realized that if they came together, they could get the politicians to come to them,” explains Baskin”…

        • Chris- I read that article last year. I am not an expert on Chicago politics, you’re talking about aldermen here. At the state level in Illinois, the problem is liars like state Rep. Brandon Phelps, and traitors like NRA lobbyist Todd Vandermyde. With friends like these, who needs enemies?

          If you want to study the relationships between politicians and people with criminal associations, Vandermyde was lobbyist for William Dugan at the Intl. Union of Operating Engineers local 150 in Countryside, before Dugan was convicted by U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald in 2010.

  12. Has NRA barged into the Ezell case yet to steal some time from Alan Gura, the way they did with McDonald v. Chicago? Maybe NRA lawyers can shove their way in at the last minute and at least steal some attorney’s fees, now that it looks like the case will be successful.

    I’m sure that the next case taken on by NRA will be to knock out the public transportation ban in state Rep. Brandon Phelps 2013 concealed carry bill. Maybe not, that only affects poor black people in Chicago and Cook County, and the white racist NRA types who vote for cowards like Phelps don’t really care about that. They drive their monster trucks everywhere, and they never leave their trailer parks except to get beer.

    Right now the Illinois state legislature is looking at a penalty enhancement gun bill in Springfield. I wonder what kind of deal NRA lobbyist Todd Vandermyde is cutting with police unions to sell out gun owners as we speak?

    • Wow… accusing other people of racism while calling rural white people “hicks”… classy. Why don’t you take your race baiting to someone who gives a shit. Chicagoans made their bed, they can damn well sleep in it. If they don’t want hood rats shooting up their neighborhoods, perhaps they should stop electing race hustlers?

      • “Chicagoans made their bed, they can damn well sleep in it. If they don’t want hood rats shooting up their neighborhoods, perhaps they should stop electing race hustlers?”

        Socioeconomic insights from the white racist NRA types that sold out Otis McDonald. Do they have free wi-fi now at Dixie Trucker’s Home?

    • Demo man, seeing you just can’t help it and knowing your fixation is not really your fault I will go easy on you. This white, former Chicagoan, now Chicago suburbanite, proud ISRA and NRA member says: ” Knock it off finally and GO FUCK YOURSELF!”
      There. Was it necessary?

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