This story flew under the radar this week. Rolling Stone’s Tim Dickinson has it. The Supreme Court declined (by a 7-2 margin) to hear a Seventh Circuit case that held that a ban on assault weapons in Highland Park, IL, a suburb of Chicago, was consistent with the Heller case and the Second Amendment.

Through this inaction, the Supreme Court has cleared a path for other communities across the nation to:

—outlaw assault weapons and high capacity magazines,

—declare these arms contraband and confiscate them,

—and hit violators with jail time and/or a sizable fine.

The 2013 ordinance reads “No person shall manufacture, sell, offer for display for sale, give, lend, transfer ownership of, acquire or possess any Assault Weapon or Large Capacity Magazine…”

So, if any city or community, or state across thew country wants to copy this, as Connecticut has, they are within the Supreme Court’s scope of reasonable gun control legislation.

That, of course, doesn’t shield legislators and executives from the fallout of crossing the NRA, which is the bigger threat for responsible politicians in our great American democracy. The Court has no problem with the tons of money that will array against you as a legislator that voted to ban, regulate, or looked cross-eyed at a weapon. Not to mention the threats of violence from patriotic death penis “enthusiasts.”

Certainly, a patchwork of towns, counties, cities and states doing this achieves little in the overall battle as people who just have to have an assault style death penis will travel over state lines to get them.

Localities and states that are run by responsible and brave public servants will take note and take action.

“We hope that this emboldens communities to take action,” McLively says. “There is not the constitutional issue the gun lobby would have them believe.”