When It Comes to Gun Violence, the 7th Circuit Gets It Right.

This past week there was a big meeting in Chicago attended by academics and researchers from all over the country who earn their livings by talking and writing about guns. Except this isn’t a meeting of writers whose stuff appears in magazines like The American Rifleman, Guns & Ammo, or Field & Stream.

This was a meeting put together by an organization known as The Research Society for the Prevention of Firearm-Related Harms which I wrote about last week. And what I basically said was that the one issue which didn’t seem to make it onto the meeting’s agenda was any discussion about reducing gun violence, now being referred to as ‘harms,’ by simply banning certain kinds of guns.

But it just so happens, coincidence or not, that while these well-meaning folks were sitting in a Chicago hotel trying to figure out what to do about gun violence without doing anything about guns, across town an individual who isn’t a researcher or academic announced an important court decision in a case dealing directly with gun ‘harms.’

I’m referring to Governor Pritzker’s statement about a decision by the 7th Federal Circuit Court of Appeals to uphold an Illinois law passed in January which not only regulates assault rifles, but also requires the registration of all semi-automatic, high-powered handguns whose…