The United States Supreme Court voted 7-2 on Monday to refuse to hear a challenge to an Illinois ban on automatic rifles and other automatic or semiautomatic weapons. The challenge was a Second Amendment challenge aimed at an Illinois ordinance that prohibits the private ownership of automatic weapons and large capacity magazines for those weapons. The Justices gave no explanation for the 7 who voted not to hear the challenge.

The two dissenters, Justice Clarence Thomas and Justice Antonin Scalia, objected and wanted to hear the case. The Justice’s stated that they were not pleased with lower courts totally ignoring previous Second Amendment rulings that had been ruled on by the Court, according to The New York Times.

The Illinois ordinance was put into place in 2013 and bans what the Illinois bureaucrats had referred to as “assault weapons”. They declared that citizens could not own these guns as well as being prohibited from owning high capacity magazines. The politicians defined “assault weapons” as semi automatic and automatic weapons that also include a handle grip for the hand that is not working the trigger. For them, a high capacity magazine is any magazine that can hold more than ten bullets.

In 2008, the Supreme Court eliminated a federal law that prohibited citizens from keeping handguns in their homes. In 2010, the Supreme Court once again defended the Second Amendment and ruled that it applied to state as well as local governments.

The Illinois State Rifle Association was bringing the challenge against Highland Park, Illinois. The Illinois State Rifle Association said the term “assault weapons” is “an imaginary and pejorative category.”

The Association and others wanted the Supreme Court to recognize that the lower courts have been ignoring the existence of the Second Amendment and have failed to realize that the constitutional amendments are in place as a sort of rule book for governments with regard to what they are not allowed to do.