Politics Index

The 2nd Amendment Need Not Apply

November 28th, 2008 admin Posted in conservative |

On the heels of Lee’s post (see below), California is hardly alone in having places that don’t think a Supreme Court decision on the right to bear arms applies to them. Take, for example, the Windy City.

When it comes to firearms, Chicago Mayor Richard Daley is no slave to rationality. “Does this lead to everyone having a gun in our society?” he demanded after the ruling came down. “Then why don’t we do away with the court system and go back to the Old West, where you have a gun and I have a gun and we’ll settle it in the streets?”

From listening to him, you might assume that the only places in North America that don’t have firefights on a daily basis are cities that outlaw handguns. You might also assume that Chicago is an oasis of concord, rather than the site of 443 homicides last year.

So it’s no surprise that Daley refuses to make the slightest change in the handgun ordinance, preferring to fight the lawsuits filed by the National Rifle Association. He is not impressed that 1) the law almost certainly violates the Constitution, which elected officials are supposed to uphold, and 2) it will cost taxpayers a lot of money to fight lawsuits the city is bound to lose.

The Chicago ban dates back to 1983—a time when no one had to worry about the forgotten Second Amendment. The ordinance prohibited the possession of all handguns (except those acquired before the law took effect).

It had no obvious benefits: Homicides climbed in the ensuing years and by 1992 were 41 percent higher than before. But the policy rested undisturbed until last summer, when the Supreme Court ruled that Washington’s complete ban on handguns violated the individual right to use arms for self-defense in the home.

If that logic applies to the D.C. statute, it very likely applies to Chicago’s law. The city, however, notes that the nation’s capital is a federal enclave, and that the court did not say that states must respect the Second Amendment. That’s true. The court’s ruling also did not say that China is in Asia, which doesn’t make it part of South America.

I always find it highly ironic when cities controlled by liberal politicians raise a hue and cry during election time when they say that their citizens’ votes aren’t being counted because they’re Americans too, yet when it comes to certain rights suddenly the notion that they are subject to the same laws as the rest of us doesn’t seem to matter. (Bear in mind that Obama is a product of the same Chicago politics that got Daley into his dad’s fifedom, yet he is now President-elect and, despite paranoid rumors to the contrary, will as President honor the Second Amendment. See what I mean about irony?)

For me, this isn’t so much a states’ rights issue about gun restrictions as it is a Constitutional one about guaranteeing the rights of the people, everywhere. If the Constutition is the law of the land, as defined by the Supreme Court, then cities should respect it. Seeing as how they get their funding from the government mandated by that Constitution, you’d think they would. But I guess to Hizzonor the law only applies when you agree with it.