March 5, 2013
Guns: An Illinois court has ruled that the Second Amendment means what it says and has ordered the state legislature to adopt a law by June that lets citizens bear arms in self-defense, not just keep them.
On Feb. 22, a 5-4 majority of the 10-member U.S. Seventh Court of Appeals upheld the Dec. 11 decision, which had been rendered by a three-member panel, to address absurdity and inconsistency of Illinois gun laws that allowed ownership of a firearm, but not the right to carry it outside the home. In other words, the "right to keep but not to bear arms."
Because of the decision, Illinois must join the majority of states that have enacted right-to-carry laws.
In the December opinion, Judge Richard Posner wrote that "a Chicagoan is a good deal more likely to be attacked on a sidewalk in a rough neighborhood than in his apartment on the 35th floor of the Park Tower.
Furthermore, Judge Posner wrote, "To confine the right to be armed to the home is to divorce the Second Amendment from the right of self-defense described in Heller and McDonald."
These two Supreme Court decisions affirmed that the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms was an individual right that indeed could not be infringed upon by the state.
In a 5-4 decision in 2008, Heller v. District of Columbia, written by Justice Antonin Scalia, the Supreme Court overturned the District of Columbia's draconian gun law that barred private ownership of handguns.
Justice Scalia wrote that an individual right to bear arms is supported by "the historical narrative" both before and after the Second Amendment was adopted.
On the heels of Heller, however, a three-judge panel of the same Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, led by Judge Frank Easterbrook, rejected subsequent suits brought by the National Rifle Association against the city of Chicago and its suburb of Oak Park, Ill., on the grounds that Heller applied only to the District of Columbia and not to the states and their municipalities.
That nonsense was straightened out when Otis McDonald, a 76-year-old Army veteran who lived in a high-crime area of Chicago thought the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution he fought to protect gives him the right to bear arms to protect himself and his wife as he once protected his country.
The U.S. Supreme Court agreed with him and in his case said the right to keep and bear arms was not only an individual right, but also a national one.
Still, Illinois argued, you could keep but not carry your arms. The Democrat-controlled Illinois legislature is trying to write a law chock full of those "common-sense restrictions" that President Obama, a Chicago native, warns about.
The gun-control lobby warns of a bloodbath if concealed carry passes in Illinois, as if 500 murders in Chicago, where gangs already carry concealed weapons, is not one.
In a grossly underreported story, a gunman entered a suburban mall in Clackamas, Ore., three days before the tragedy at Newtown, intent on killing as many people as possible. The shooter managed to kill only two people before killing himself. A far worse tragedy was prevented when he was confronted by Nick Meli, an armed citizen with a concealed-carry permit.
The fact is that over the last 20 years, the firearm crime rate has dropped significantly, according to the Bureau of Justice.
Only a handful of states had concealed-carry programs 20 years ago, when the violent-crime rate peaked. Today, 41 states either allow carrying without a permit or have "shall issue" laws.
Major crimes, except in gun-controlled major cities, have shown a continuing decline that has paralleled the rise in the number of right-to-carry states.
Soon Illinois will be one of them, and its citizens will be safer.
Source: IBD
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