CHICAGO — An Illinois law prohibiting people from carrying a loaded gun except for in their home or business was struck down by a federal appeals court.

In a 2-1 ruling, a panel of the 7th U.S. Court of Appeals in Chicago on Tuesday reversed two lower-court decisions upholding the law. It ordered the cases returned to the courts for “declarations of unconstitutionality” and permanent injunctions.

The judges delayed the ruling from taking effect for 180days to allow Illinois lawmakers to write a replacement measure consistent with public safety and the Second Amendment. Illinois is the only state in the U.S. with an outright ban on carrying a loaded weapon outside the home.

“One doesn’t have to be a historian to realize that a right to keep and bear arms for personal self-defense in the 18th century could not rationally have been limited to the home,” U.S. Circuit Judge Richard Posner wrote.

The U.S. Supreme Court in 2008 ruled that the amendment confers an individual right to keep and bear arms, strikingdown a handgun ban in the District of Columbia by a 5-4 vote. By the same margin two years later, the high court invalidated a Chicago ordinance that banned guns even within the home.

“To confine the right to be armed to the home is to divorce the Second Amendment from the right of self-defense” described in those rulings, according to Posner’s opinion, in which he was joined by U.S. Circuit Judge Joel Flaum.

Circuit Judge Ann Claire Williams dissented.

“Reasonable people candiffer on how guns should be regulated,” she wrote. “Illinois has chosen to prohibit most forms of public carry of readyto-use guns.”

Absent what she called “clearer indication” that the Second Amendment codified a right to carry guns in public for self-defense, Williams said, that judgment should have been left to the state.

“The court gave 180 days before its decision will be returned to the lower court to be implemented,” state Attorney General Lisa Madigan said in an e-mailed statement.

Front Section, Pages 2 on 12/12/2012