Thursday, June 26, 2008

Stubborn Kind of Heller


After a couple really bad calls, the Supreme Court did get one right today, ruling 5-4 to strike down the complete gun ban in Washington, D.C. I'm not an outdoorsman and I haven't spent much time in the company of guns, but it's clearly the right call.

Meanwhile, in Chicago, Mayor Daley is very angry about the fact that his city's gun ban is now in danger. He seems to think that William Holden and the rest of his Wild Buch pals are going to set up shop on LaSalle Street. As usual, Hizzoner machine gunned an advance army of strawmen:


"Does this lead to everyone having a gun in our society?" Daley asked while speaking at a Navy Pier event. "If they [the Supreme Court] think that's the answer, then they're greatly mistaken. Then why don't we do away with the court system and go back to the Old West, you have a gun and I have a gun, and we'll settle it in
the streets if that's they're thinking."

"We think we're such an improved society," he added. "The rest of the world
is laughing at us."


This is rot, of course. In most places with concealed carry laws and essentially unfettered gun rights, Wild West behavior is pretty rare. But in places where gun bans exist, like Washington, D.C. and Chicago, murder by gun is distressingly common. I lived two blocks from the western border of Chicago for five years and there was never any question about the amount of guns that were out there. The Bulls won two championships during the time I was there and you could hear people firing off guns all night long.

The best part of the decision is this: now that the Supreme Court has, however tenuously, affirmed my right to own a gun, I probably don't need one anymore.

5 comments:

Right Hook said...

It's downright scary that there are four members of SCOTUS that are willing to take away our rights regardless of what the Constitution says. If Algore or Kerry were sitting in the Oval Office it is unlikely that we would have Justices Roberts and Alito on the Court and could have very well lost our Second Amendments rights at the whim of some liberal activist judges.

We need to get over this notion that the Constitution grants us rights (it merely affirms what the founders characterized as rights bestowd on us by God) and that the Supreme Court has dicatatorial power over our elected representatives and the President.

The current SCOTUS is clealy rogue and out of control and needs to be reigned in through the appointment of judges that interpret the applicability of the Constitution (or possibly the non-applicability
as in Roe v Wade) and not dicatatorically impose fiat law.

Obama is a clear and present danger to take the Court even further to the left than it currently is through judicial appointments. This alone is enough to rigorously oppose his election regardless of the flaws of John McCain.

Mr. D said...

Agree completely, RH. I had hoped that the influence of Roberts would start to temper the enthusiasm of some of the justices to legislate from the bench, but clearly that hasn't happened. My guess is that the next president could appoint 3-5 new justices. McCain might give us a Souter, but Obama will certainly deliver someone like Breyer or Ginsburg. That matters a lot.

Gino said...

in truth, the wild west wasnt all that wild.
its reputation was a result of fiction writers who wrote tales of the romanticised west for the readers back east who ate it up.

in the territories, with no law to speak of, folks did carry for safety, bad men were killed, and your normal everyday citizen was more polite to each other and respected one another in general.

Right Hook said...

Like the saying goes, America was built with God, guns, and guts. Over the years the liberal/socialist left has been assaulting all of these to the detriment of the nation.

Mr. D said...

That's true, Gino. As was often said in those days, an armed society is a polite society.

And God, guns and guts are often in short supply, as you rightly point out, RH.