The editorial board of the New York Times has once again decided to focus their energies on making the world a safer place for tyrannical government.

After an op-ed last week calling on the federal government to gut the right of citizens to bear those arms best suited for defeating tyrants, they’ve taken one of many gutless decisions by the Robert’s court to call for states to do what the federal government will not:

On Monday, the court declined to hear a challenge to a Chicago suburb’s law banning semiautomatic assault weapons and magazines that hold more than 10 rounds of ammunition.

The town of Highland Park, Ill., passed the 2013 ordinance, which bans categories of weapons as well as specific guns by name, including the AR-15 and the AK-47, in the wake of the massacre of 26 children and educators at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn. The shooter in that attack, like those in many mass shooting, used a semiautomatic assault rifle with a high-capacity magazine.

It was the 70th time since 2008 that the Supreme Court has declined to consider a lawsuit challenging a federal, state or local gun regulation. This creates a big opportunity for Americans to put pressure on their state and local leaders, especially since Congress refuses to approve even uncontroversial measures like universal background checks for gun sales, which are supported by nearly nine in 10 Americans. Until that changes, states and cities have the constitutional authority and moral obligation to protect the public from the scourge of gun violence.

Let’s be very, very clear: the Founding Fathers would have been appalled by the 2013 ordinance passed by Highland Park, and if the Founders were alive today, there is a good chance that the Highland Park’s leaders would have been roughly pulled from their homes and tarred and feathered in disgrace before their homes were burned to ash. Men like Jefferson and Adams were patriots who had just won a long and costly war that was triggered by a gun control raid on April 19, 1775 in the towns of Lexington and Concord, and did not suffer fools.

Unfortunately, the Robert’s court is feckless and craven. They passed on hearing the case because they know that if they took it up, they must overturn it. Once they overturned it, the precedent would once and for all gut the basis of all assault weapons bans on any level of government, henceforth. We warned in early November that the court would set us on a path towards a very uncivil civil conflict, and they have not disappointed our low expectations of their integrity.

The editors of the Times, dim-witted and myopic in their echo chamber, are intent on passing more state and local level laws banning the crucial tools of liberty, and naively believe that Americans will abide by these edicts.

We most assuredly will not. We most assuredly have not.

They need not look any further than their own front doors for confirmation.

Both Connecticut and New York rammed through blatantly unconstitutional gun laws in the wake of Sandy Hook. Both states banned entire classes of firearms and magazines, and demanded citizens register their firearms.

Citizens in both states reacted with blatant civil disobedience.

More than 85% of Connecticut’s gun owners refused to register their weapons. When spokesmen for the Connecticut State Police made rumblings that they knew who had at least some of these firearms, and that they might attempt to start arresting some of the 80,000-100,000 non-compliant gun owners, Connecticut’s gun owners noted that there were only 1,100 State Police, and dared them to try.

Governor Dannel Malloy hasn’t dared rattle that cage since.

In neighboring New York, the disobedience was even more pronounced.

Citizens refused to register more than a million firearms with a stunning non-compliance rate of more than 95-percent. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo sputtered and fumed, but could no nothing. Sheriffs around the state openly stated they would not enforce the blatantly unconstitutional laws. and they haven’t.

Banned “assault weapons” and “high capacity” magazines continue to flow into New York State like water with a wink and a nod. Most law enforcement officers in the state not only know numerous people in clear violation of the NY SAFE Act and refuse to arrest them, but are willfully in violation of this unjust law themselves.

It’s a paper law that only inspires contempt for law, and inspired hundreds of thousands of otherwise law-abiding citizens to become outlaws.

What the Times and their allies in the Democrat Party and the courts don’t seem to grasp is that the Declaration of Independence, Constitution, and Bill of Rights are easily understood by the citizenry. We recognize blatantly unconstitutional laws at a glance, and refuse to listen to the sophistry of politicians and would-be power brokers.

For now, this disobedience remains civil.

For now.