Big win for gun-rights groups: Federal appeals court tosses state ban on carrying concealed weapons 

Chicago Sun-Times

SPRINGFIELD-In a huge win for gun-rights groups, a federal appeals court in Chicago Tuesday tossed the state's ban on carrying concealed weapons and gave Illinois' Legislature 180 days to craft a law legalizing concealed carry.

"The debate is over. We won. And there will be a statewide carry law in 2013," said Todd Vandermyde, a lobbyist for the National Rifle Association.

In a split opinion (see below), the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a lower court ruling in two cases downstate that upheld the state's longstanding prohibition against carrying concealed weapons.

Illinois is the only state with an outright prohibition on concealed carry.

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LifeSiteNews.com

By Patrick B. Craine

PEORIA, Illinois – After a fiery homily last weekend urging the faithful to oppose [Alleged] President Obama’s “radical pro-abortion and extreme secularist agenda” at the ballot box in November, Bishop Daniel Jenky of Peoria has been hit with an IRS complaint from a national secularist lobby group.

At a gathering of Catholic men on Saturday, the Illinois prelate had slammed Obama’s mandate forcing religious employers to cover contraceptives, sterilizations, and abortion-inducing drugs. The unprecedented attack on religious freedom, he said, signaled that the president “seems intent on following a similar path” as past dictators such as Hitler, Stalin, and Otto von Bismarck.

“This fall, every practicing Catholic must vote, and must vote their Catholic consciences, or by the following fall our Catholic schools, our Catholic hospitals, our Catholic Newman Centers, all our public ministries - only excepting our church buildings – could easily be shut down,” he said.

On Thursday, the Washington-based Americans United for Separation of Church and State claimed the homily violated federal law by taking sides in a political campaign.

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