A legal challenge to Cook County's ordinance banning assault weapons, first filed in 2007, will come before a judge thanks to an Illinois Supreme Court ruling yesterday. The state's high court ruled that a judge and subsequent appeals court should not have thrown out a challenge against the ban. The plaintiff's challenge was thrown out even after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned, in 2010, Chicago's ordinance that effectively bans handguns.

Cook County has banned assault weapons since 1993 in an ordinance that gives several descriptions, like possessing a "large-capacity magazine," of what makes an assault weapon. Plaintiffs contend that the ordinance is still too vague and that it outlaws popular hunting weapons.