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 Gun-rights activists are once again gearing up for battle. Following last year’s decision to strike down Washington D.C.’s prohibition on handguns, the U.S. Supreme Court decided last week to take up another case about the right to keep and bear arms. And this one could have even more widespread implications throughout the Union than District of Columbia v. Heller, where the court upheld the individual human right within the federal district.
In McDonald v. Chicago, the court will rule on the constitutionality of Chicago’s quarter-century-old draconian measures restricting firearm ownership — essentially an outright ban on the possession of a handgun, a primary and essential tool of self-defense for tens of millions of Americans. A federal Court of Appeals upheld the restriction. Now, the high court ruling could pave the way to challenging the myriad of statutes and ordinances limiting the freedom of law-abiding Americans across the country at the state and local levels.
"When I'm at home, I can't even protect myself there. This house here has been broken into at least three times only a week ago," Chicago resident Otis McDonald, who is leading the charge, told ABC News. "I know what my rights are, and I have an inherited right to own a gun in my own home." Asking the Supreme Court to overturn the local ordinance, he noted that his life has been threatened by thugs and that being able to protect himself would make him feel more secure.
It is widely anticipated by both sides that the high court will decide in favor of gun-rights proponents, according to an Associated Press report titled ‘Ban handguns? Supreme Court taking a new look.’ But there is a catch.
Mark Tushnet, a Harvard Law Professor cited by the AP, believes the court will have to decide what limits are “reasonable,” maybe even restriction by restriction. And that’s not all. "It's very hard to know where this court would draw the line between reasonable and unreasonable," he added.
Based on Justice Antonin Scalia’s statements about the lack of an “absolute” right to guns, the president of the anti-gun Brady Campaign Paul Helmke, is hoping that the court will continue to allow broad restrictions. "The court made it very clear that the Second Amendment right is not unlimited and that there can be restrictions on who gets guns, where they take guns, what kind of guns they get, how they're carried, how they're stored, how they're sold," he said.
But gun-rights advocates are hoping for another landmark victory that will help them bring down gun-control regimes nationwide. "Core fundamental freedoms like speech, religion and, we believe, the right to keep and bear arms are intended to apply to every individual in the country," said Wayne LaPierre, the executive vice-president of the National Rifle Association.
Others went further. “If the right to keep and bear arms is found not to be a ‘fundamental’ right, people in places like Chicago and New York City will find themselves on a 21st century plantation, treated more like subjects than citizens,” concluded John Velleco of Gun Owners of America.
The court will be ruling on whether or not the 14th Amendment extends the prohibition on infringements upon the individual right of firearm ownership to state and municipal governments. Ironically, one of the reasons for the amendment’s enactment was to stop government violations of the rights of newly freed slaves to defend themselves.
“The rampant violation of the right to keep and bear arms was understood to be among the chief evils vitiated by adoption of the 14th Amendment,” explained the Chicago residents in their appeal. Some rights enumerated in the U.S. Constitution have been extended by the court to apply to states as well, though not all of them.
Newly appointed Justice Sonia Sotomayor recently ruled on a similar case in New York while serving on the federal court of appeals there. She upheld government restrictions on firearms and revealed her attitude toward the 2nd Amendment: It does not apply to the states.
Judge Frank Easterbrook of the lower court — which decided to uphold the Chicago ordinance — ruled that "the Constitution establishes a federal republic where local differences are to be cherished as elements of liberty rather than extirpated in order to produce a single, nationally applicable rule." But the court ignored something more important than the principle of federalism.
Rights are unalienable and endowed by humanity’s Creator. They cannot legitimately be restricted or legislated away by government. The God-given rights to life, liberty and property are meaningless without the ability to defend them. And the governments of Chicago, New York and Washington D.C. all stepped outside of the bounds of legitimate government with their anti-gun agendas.
The U.S. Constitution and almost all state constitutions recognize and protect the pre-existing right to keep and bear arms — but they do not grant it. If “rights” came from governments or majorities in a democracy, they would be privileges that could be revoked. In American law and tradition, individual rights are and always have been superior to government. And if the government did not give those rights, it cannot take them away.
The high court will likely overturn the Chicago ordinance, especially since the five-justice majority that ruled in D.C. v. Heller is still at the helm. But Americans should not need the Supreme Court to tell them what their rights and freedoms are, or even if they have any at all. Rights are unalienable, no matter what Chicago, Congress or even the Supreme Court decide. Citizens should demand that their public servants start respecting those rights; and firing said servants when necessary would be a good way to start laying down the law.
Alex Newman is an American freelance writer and the president of Liberty Sentinel Media, Inc., a small media consulting firm. He is currently living in Sweden and has spent most of his life in Latin America, Europe and Africa. He has a degree in foreign languages and speaks Spanish, French, Portuguese, German, Italian and a little Swedish and Afrikaans. In addition, he earned a degree in journalism from the University of Florida, with emphasis on economics and international relations.
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