{"id":7553,"date":"2009-12-30T09:33:55","date_gmt":"2009-12-30T14:33:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=7553"},"modified":"2009-12-30T09:33:55","modified_gmt":"2009-12-30T14:33:55","slug":"the-orcs-are-gathering","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=7553","title":{"rendered":"The Orcs Are Gathering"},"content":{"rendered":"

As the clock ticks toward March and the Supreme Court arguments in re McDonald v. City of Chicago<\/em>, the anti-civil-rights orcs are mustering their forces:<\/a><\/p>\n

In a few months time, the Supreme Court will revisit the Second Amendment in McDonald v. City of Chicago, which challenges a gun-control ordinance in the city.<\/p>\n

Not surprisingly, the case is attracting heavy interest around the country.<\/p>\n

The Sacramento Bee today reports that Sacramento\u2019s City Council has voted to join other cities arguing in support of Chicago\u2019s right to regulate the posssesion and use of firearms.<\/p>\n

Other cities invited to file briefs supporting Chicago include Baltimore, Cleveland, Los Angeles, and Philadelphia.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

At last check, gun control has treated those cities so <\/em>well, hasn’t it?\u00a0 Four of the five cities have not only among the toughest gun controls in the United States, but share an average violent crime rate of over 1,400 per 100,000 residents<\/a> – well over triple the national average<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Sacramento City councilman Kevin McCarty, who supports the city\u2019s involvement in the case, told the Bee that guns \u201care most likely to be used by assailants or people who shouldn\u2019t have guns in the first place.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Sacremento?\u00a0 997\/100,000, well over double the national average.<\/p>\n

But there is plenty of firepower on the other side of the case.<\/p>\n

Many states, including Texas, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, have filed an amicus brief arguing that Chicago\u2019s handgun ban is unconstitutional. Here\u2019s a link to that brief.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Note to Lori Swanson; while I’m unlikely to vote for you on any number of grounds for any office, you could certainly earn credit in heaven by filing a brief for the plaintiff here.\u00a0 Whatever your other faults, you’ve been right on this issue more consistently than most politicians in Minnesota.<\/p>\n

At issue in the McDonald case is whether the Second Amendment right to bear arms applies to states.<\/p>\n

In D.C. v. Heller, the Supremes a few terms back ruled that Washington, D.C.\u2019s gun-control ordinance violated the Constitution, but that ruling dealt with a federal statute, not state law. Several courts, including the Seventh Circuit in the McDonald case, have since ruled that the Second Amendment does not apply to the states.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And while I dream of the Seventh Circuit being chased down the street in their underwear by a mob wielding pitchforks and torches, I’m sure they had their (faulty) reasons.<\/p>\n

To get at whether the Second Amendment binds states and localities may require a parsing of the 14th Amendment\u2019s Privileges and Immunities Clause, namely whether the right to bear arms is a privilege that can not be abridged by states.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The word we’re looking for is “human right”, “endowed” to “the people” by “our creator”.\u00a0 See to that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As the clock ticks toward March and the Supreme Court arguments in re McDonald v. City of Chicago, the anti-civil-rights orcs are mustering their forces: In a few months time, the Supreme Court will revisit the Second Amendment in McDonald v. City of Chicago, which challenges a gun-control ordinance in the city. Not surprisingly, the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[82,22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7553","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-scotus","category-victim-disarmament"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7553","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7553"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7553\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7561,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7553\/revisions\/7561"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7553"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7553"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7553"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}