Monday, June 28, 2010
Politics / Clout City / News Supreme Court Nixes Chicago's Gun Ban
Posted by Mick Dumke on 06.28.10 at 09:59 AM
In a decision widely expected for months, the U.S. Supreme Court has upheld a challenge to Chicago's 28-year-old handgun ban, effectively consigning the law to the history books.
The decision, which you can read in a PDF file here, was announced Monday morning. "Self-defense is a basic right, recognized by many legal systems from ancient times to the present day," Justice Samuel Alito writes in the majority opinion. "Individual self-defense is 'the central component' of the Second Amendment right."
Though Mayor Daley, the gun ban's biggest supporter, had hoped the court would come to see his side of things—"Maybe one of them will have an incident and they'll change their mind overnight, going to and from work," he said last month—the city has been suggesting for weeks that it will find other ways to try to restrict the flow of guns into Chicago. And Alito comes right out and states that the city has plenty of options.
"It is important to keep in mind that Heller, while striking down a law that prohibited the possession of handguns in the home, recognized that the right to keep and bear arms is not 'a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose,'" Alito writes, alluding to the court's 2008 decision striking down a gun ban in Washington, DC, that Chicago's was modeled after. "We made it clear in Heller that our holding did not cast doubt on such longstanding regulatory measures as 'prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill,' 'laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms.' We repeat those assurances here. Despite municipal respondents'; doomsday proclamations, incorporation does not imperil every law regulating firearms."
Last week Daley and his allies in the City Council announced that they would act as soon as this Wednesday with legislation designed to curtail handgun access, potentially including regulations on licensing and sales as well as training requirements.
But that won't resolve any of the local political battles over gun rights and violence in Chicago. One local gun-rights group has been denied permission to use public space for a town-hall meeting, and the mayor has signaled over and over that he's going to continue to rely on restricting access to guns as his chief crime-fighting strategy--even though the city continues to experience shocking levels of violence with a gun ban in place. Dozens of people were shot again this weekend; last weekend there were more than 50 casualties, and police say Chicago has averaged more than four shootings a day since the beginning of the year.
Though gun-control groups say access to firearms leads to increased accidents, gun thefts, and even robberies and burglaries, gun-rights advocates claim that citizens are more vulnerable to violence with a handgun ban in place, an argument Alito went out of his way to highlight. "Chicago Police Department statistics, we are told, reveal that the City's handgun murder rate has actually increased since the ban was enacted and that Chicago residents now face one of the highest murder rates in the country and rates of other violent crimes that exceed the average in comparable cities."
Comments (7)
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"Chicago Police Department statistics, we are told, reveal that the City’s handgun murder rate has actually increased since the ban was enacted"
Along with having gone down at times.
"Chicago residents now face one of the highest murder rates in the country"
Around 15th or so.
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I'm not going to necessarily disagree with the entire decision since I'm not a 2nd Amendment expert and have mixed feelings about the issue, but I find it pretty ridiculous that Alito would claim that "Individual self-defense is 'the central component' of the Second Amendment right."
If I remember correctly the text of the second amendment begins "A well regulated Militia, being necessary the security of a free State..." I understand that "Individual self-defence" is an important consideration when determining gun control policy, but it's completely absurd and arrogant for a Supreme Court Justice to conclude from the amendment's language that it is "the central component" of anything. It very obviously is not, considering the individual possession of a handgun is neither "well regulated" nor in any way related to a "militia."
And people like to call liberal justices "activist." Please.
The 2nd amendment in whole says: A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.
The people here are the same in the preamble and the 1st amendment.
The city of Chicago appears to want to squash the 1st amendment also, as show in the http://www.chicagoreader.com/TheBlog/archives/2010/06/25/park-district-balks-at-gun-rights-group-meeting article
felons and "the" mentally ill
I have no problem finding a legal definition of "felons," could you please supply me one for "the" mentally ill?
It rings familiarly. I recall it from history as "the" Blacks, and "the" Jews. Are we really still there?
Harold A. Maio
Socdem unfortunately your arguing the militia issue which has been argued and lost twice now at the Supreme court level in both the Heller and McDonald cases in the last 2 years.
A lot of misunderstanding on this goes back to Miller vs US in 1939 (The last firearms related rights case the upper court took)
Miller lost because he failed to prove that his sawed-off shotgun was within the class of weapons protected under the Second Amendment. He was a wheelman for a bank robbing gang with a previous criminal record. Its a pretty interesting story. Miller pleaded guilty in a lower court and it was refused and railroaded all the way to the supreme court as an example.
Thats where The government argued the Second Amendment “refers to the militia, a protective force of government; to the collective body and not individual rights.” Millers appointed lawyer didn't even present oral arguments at the court due to lack of funding.
The decision. On May 15, 1939, Justice James Clark McReynolds “drawled from the bench: ‘We construe the amendment as having relation to military service and we are unable to say that a sawed-off shotgun has any relation to the militia.’”
Thats where all this Militia disagreement has come for 80 + years now.
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abs…
Greetings from the South Side! I’d like to recommend the following to my neighbors. 1) Chuck’s in Riverdale. He’s put up with the Reverends’ (Jackson and Pfleger) demonstrations at his store for years. Let’s give him payback. 2) Freddie Bear in Tinley Park. No car? No problem! Take the Rock Island to Tinley Park (Oak Park Ave) stop and walk 1 block. 3) Rink’s in Lemont. Worth the drive. Small shop with range and great prices – and no Cook County sales tax! 4) Skip the “Mega” location(s). You’ll get better service and better prices elsewhere.
*I have no problem finding a legal definition of "felons," could you please supply me one for "the" mentally ill?*
http://www.answers.com/topic/incompetency
