The Supreme Court has spoken. The right to keep and bear arms is an individual right. The text of the right says "shall not be infringed" and that hasn't been successfully disputed in court ever.

So, our gun rights are our rights and they can't be taken away.

And yet, lawmakers keep trying to do it just the same. Every time they do, there's a challenge in court.

But in a recent story about how Illinois's attorney general recognizes the challenges of defending gun control, there was another little tidbit that caught my eye.

In defending gun control laws in Illinois and other states, Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul recognizes the challenges posed by recent U.S. Supreme Court precedent on the right to keep and bear arms.

Raoul’s office is defending the state’s gun ban in federal court. Illinois is not the only place Raoul is defending gun control laws. He’s filed friends of the court briefs in other federal courts supporting gun control laws in Massachusetts, Minnesota and beyond.

“I spend a lot of time with my colleagues, my attorney general colleagues in other states, both Republican and Democrat, and we try to work collectively on issues,” Raoul told The Center Square.

Raoul and a coalition of other attorneys general filed an amicus brief Wednesday in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit in support of a federal statute that prevents individuals from transferring or receiving firearms outside the state where they reside, except through a federally-licensed firearms dealer, importer or manufacturer.

Now, this particular measure is stupid since federal law says any gun sales outside of one's home state must be conducted in compliance with that state's laws, so there shouldn't be an issue. So why is Raoul spending a lot of time with other attorneys general on something like this or other gun control laws?

Why are they conspiring to strip people of their constitutionally protected rights?

Because that's essentially what Raoul admitted to doing here. 

I'm not saying it's illegal, mind you. As far as I'm aware, there's no law prohibiting an attorney general in one state from consulting the attorney general in another state. There's nothing that prohibits them from working together on anything.

That doesn't change the fact that Raoul and company are taking advantage of money spent by other states' taxpayers to try to create a legal strategy that would permit them to infringe on our rights. While it might not be illegal, it's just plain wrong.

They may not have the resources on their own to concoct a legal theory that might hold up, so they'll pool their resources, conspiring to find a way to justify taking your rights away from you, potentially finding some obscure 18th Century gun restriction that one of them might have missed or whatever, and then get a restriction that shouldn't be permitted upheld by the courts.

This is wrong, even if it's legal.

Then again, this is Illinois, where the Venn diagram of retired politicians and convicted felons overlaps a lot more than in most other states. Nothing should surprise me.