Second Amendment

I have never read anything this guy has written but now I can be a fan because this is exactly what the anti-gun people need to read; articulate and to the point with some true historical facts thrown in for good measure. I cannot believe I read this on the opinion page of the New York Daily News. Right across from the editorial about how New York City will become the Wild West due to our Right-Wing Supreme Court. People, gun owners and advocates do not have a problem with regulation, we have a problem with banning and prohibition of ownership. What the liberals and the lefties forget is a very simple and basic truth of America and it's Constitution and the Amendments thereof. The Second Amendment allows this great experiment in freedom to continue day after day. It guarantees each and everyone of us our freedoms and rights of "Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness." It allows us to defend these rights if someone tries to take them away from us and it does not matter if they are a private citizen or and over stepping government. Guns keep us free from tyranny wherever it may come from. "We the People," have the power to control our government "of, by and for the people" not those self important scumbags currently residing in Washington D.C. Yes I understand that the left thinks this is a paranoid view but let's face if we are not vigilant when it comes to our own freedom ask yourself this: Who will be?

Overdue respect for gun rights: The Supreme Court finally gives Second Amendment due protection.

By Damon Root


Two years ago, in District of Columbia vs. Heller, the Supreme Court struck down Washington, D.C.'s Draconian handgun ban as a violation of the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms. Yet that ruling applied only to laws passed by the federal government, which oversees Washington. Does the Second Amendment apply against state and local gun control laws as well?

It does now. In yesterday's landmark decision in McDonald vs. City of Chicago, the high court ruled that the Second Amendment trumps the Windy City's handgun ban thanks to the due process clause of the 14th Amendment, which commands that no state shall "deprive any person of life, liberty or property, without due process of law."

It's about time.

For more than a century, the Supreme Court has gradually applied most of the provisions in the Bill of Rights to state and local governments via the 14th Amendment's due process clause. The First Amendment, for example, was first applied against the states in the 1925 case of Gitlow vs. New York.

Yet the Second Amendment has been something of a forgotten stepchild - entirely excluded from this process. Yesterday's ruling therefore gives the Second Amendment some long-overdue respect.

After all, if the Supreme Court won't let New York or Chicago ignore the First Amendment, why should the Second Amendment be treated any differently? They're both right there in the Bill of Rights.

Equally important, yesterday's decision takes a major step toward restoring the original meaning of the 14th Amendment, which was ratified in 1868 to secure individual rights - including the right of armed self-defense - against abusive state and local governments.

Consider the historical context. In the wake of the Civil War, the former Confederate states began passing a series of laws, ordinances and regulations that robbed the recently freed slaves and their white allies of their political, economic and civil rights, including the right to keep and bear arms. Mississippi's 1866 Black Code, for example, declared "that no freedman, free Negro or mulatto . . . shall keep or carry firearms of any kind."

To put that another way, America's original gun control laws were created to disarm African-Americans and leave them at the mercy of racist state governments. (This isn't a history you're likely to hear much about from those who support terribly restrictive gun control laws like those in Chicago, which essentially banned the possession of handguns outright in the mistaken belief that keeping guns out of citizens' hands - including the hands of responsible people - is necessary for public safety.)

So the radical Republicans of the 39th Congress responded with the 14th Amendment, designed to secure the life, liberty and property of all Americans from tyrannical state attack, including those times when state officials turned a blind eye to lynch mobs and Ku Klux Klan attacks. In the words of Sen. Jacob Howard of Michigan, who presented the 14th Amendment to the Senate and spearheaded its passage, the purpose was "to restrain the power of the states and compel them at all times to respect these great fundamental guarantees," including "the right to keep and to bear arms."

It's fitting, therefore, that the lead plaintiff in this case, Otis McDonald, is a 76-year-old African-American who simply wants to defend his family and himself from the illegally armed thugs who have long terrorized his Chicago neighborhood. As this retired union leader and Army veteran has put it, "I only want a handgun in my house for my protection."

Responsible gun owners such as McDonald won't be shooting bystanders, robbing old ladies or taking part in any wild crime sprees. They simply wish to exercise their fundamental right to self-defense in the very places where gun control laws have failed.

New York could use some gun owners like that. Yet under the city's current gun control regime, the Police Department gets to pick and choose which citizens are allowed to defend themselves, resulting in a select handful of individuals receiving handgun permits while the overwhelming majority of New Yorkers are forbidden from getting them. There's nothing fair about that.

Yesterday's Supreme Court decision is certain to spark a new round of lawsuits challenging the country's most unconstitutional gun control laws. The National Rifle Association has already begun work on several new cases. Mayor Bloomberg should start preparing his defense.

Root is an associate editor at Reason magazine.