Gun Rights Groups File Suit to end Unconstitutional Chicago Gun Ban

Buckeye Firearms Association ^ | 06/26/08 | staff

[epow]

Attorney Alan Gura, on behalf of a coalition of the Second Amendment Foundation and several Chicago Residents, filed suit this morning against the City of Chicago, challenging that city’s draconian gun ban laws. You can view a copy of the complaint here.

This suit is the necessary and logical second step towards restoring the Second Amendment as a viable force in American law. As you read from our prior coverage, the Heller decision applies only to the Federal government. A necessary second step is “incorporation” of the Second Amendment against the 50 states. As originally written, none of the Bill of Rights applied to the states. That was accomplished by the adoption of the 14th Amendment. The gun ban extremists argue that the Second Amendment has never been incorporated, the pro-gun activists argue that it has. Now we will have the answer.

This is a critical next step in the small, building block approach on the way towards fully restoring the Second Amendment.

Predictably, Chicago Mayor Dick Daly is squealing like a stuck pig.

From the story:

An angry Mayor Richard Daley on Thursday called the Supreme Court's overturning of the Washington D.C. handgun ban "a very frightening decision" and vowed to fight vigorously any challenges to Chicago's ban.

That challenge was not long in coming. Hours after the high court's ruling was made public Thursday, the Second Amendment Foundation and the Illinois State Rifle Association sued the city and the mayor in an effort to overturn Chicago's quarter-century ban on handguns.

City officials expressed confidence the city would prevail in any court challenge, asserting, among other things, that the 2nd Amendment as part of the Bill of Rights restricts the federal government and does not apply to state and local governments.

..."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."

Mayor Daley and the gun ban extremists are claiming that the sky falling, and continue with their mantra of “reasonable restrictions” are permitted under Heller. Friends, what is "reasonable" about laws that have no impact on crime? That is the question that seems to allude these folks, and was actually the most shocking disconnect in today’s Heller decision, both majority and minority. Did they not learn from the failed experiment that was D.C. that gun control only disarms victims?

Luckily, gun rights proponents now get to ask that question in Court, and the government is going to have to start coming up with more than emotion to defend their laws.

[epow]

The first of what I hope will be many lawsuits against anti-gun cities and states to restore lost 2nd Amendment rights now that the SCOTUS has decided that the 2nd Amendment does protect an individual right to keep and bear arms instead of just a corporate right of the states. Mayor Daley's outrageous tirade would be hilarious if it was not coming from a man who will use the taxpayers' money to fight the restoration of their own constitutional right to keep and bear arms.

[goldstategop]

An armed society is a polite society. The point is not every one necessarily wants a gun but the government has no business depriving a single American of their lawful right of self defense of the home, family, and person. Its a right that's inherent even to the beasts in the state of nature.

"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus

[SoCal Pubbie]

Illinois Constitution, Section 22:

“Subject only to the police power, the right of the
individual citizen to keep and bear arms shall not be
infringed.”

[stevio]

Of course Daley is frightened. Sue them all over the place, make them raise taxes on their subjects because of this. Let the revolution begin.

[umgud]

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."

OK

[gleeaikin]

I guess New York City will be next. Does anyone have any statistics on the open carry law in Virginia, before and after, with allowances made for that terrible college massacre on statistics.

[TonyM]

What would you bet that either Mayor Daley himself or someone who is paid to protect him has a gun? There is no difference in his need to protect himself that every other citizen. Only in his case we taxpayers have to foot the bill for his protection.

[<1/1,000,000th%]

What took so long?

Heeeheeheeheeheeheeheeheeheeheeheeheeeheeee...

[goldstategop]

Yep. In Illinois, people can't even have the RTC. So much for the state Constituton's guarantee of the RKBA.

"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus

[goldstategop]

Hey Dick - what was so bad about OK Corral? The bad guys wound up dead. I don't see anything "frightening" about that. The Old West was the Good Old Days in America.

"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus

[epow]

I ran a search on this article and was surprised that nothing came up. It will be great news if the onerous Chicago gun law is thrown out, because that will encourage gun owners and pro-gun organizations in many other cities and counties with similar laws to sue for restoration of their now undeniable right to keep and bear arms.

[mountainlion]

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.”
OK

That is the way it works here. One hour or more for law response and wild animals here. Big cities just have different wild animals.

[goldstategop]

Yep. I see ol' Dick has never met a bear. And we do like our guns around here in the West!

"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus

[westmichman]

he added. “The rest of the world is laughing at us.”

That’s the problem with Democrats. They care too much about what the Europeans think. I wonder if Daly took a poll of them before he made this statement.

[Redcloak]

I found it interesting that Scalia quoted William Rawle, who viewed the 2nd Amendment as a restriction upon the States as well as the Federal government...

In 1825, William Rawle, a prominent lawyer who had
been a member of the Pennsylvania Assembly that ratified
the Bill of Rights, published an influential treatise, which
analyzed the Second Amendment as follows:

“The first [principle] is a declaration that a well
regulated militia is necessary to the security of a free
state; a proposition from which few will dissent. . . .
“The corollary, from the first position is, that the
right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be
infringed.
“The prohibition is general. No clause in the constitution
could by any rule of construction be conceived
to give to congress a power to disarm the people. Such
a flagitious attempt could only be made under some
general pretence by a state legislature. But if in any
blind pursuit of inordinate power, either should attempt
it, this amendment may be appealed to as a restraint
on both.” Rawle 121–122.20

Like Tucker, Rawle regarded the English game laws as
violating the right codified in the Second Amendment. See
id., 122–123. Rawle clearly differentiated between the
people’s right to bear arms and their service in a militia:
“In a people permitted and accustomed to bear arms, we
have the rudiments of a militia, which properly consists of
armed citizens, divided into military bands, and instructed
at least in part, in the use of arms for the purposes of
war.” Id., at 140.
——————
20 Rawle, writing before our decision in Barron ex rel. Tiernan v.
Mayor of Baltimore, 7 Pet. 243 (1833), believed that the Second
Amendment could be applied against the States. Such a belief would of
course be nonsensical on petitioners’ view that it protected only a right
to possess and carry arms when conscripted by the State itself into
militia service.

Of course, Heller doesn't discuss 14th Amendment incorporation; but, Scalia seems to be lobbing a softball for pro-RKBA lawyers to take a swing at.

[goldstategop]

We Americans are different. And I could care less what Europe thinks of the fact we are armed to the teeth. In Europe, they have no such right. We do and the only way the Left will ever take our guns from us is from our cold, dead hands. I think the late Charlton Heston would be gratified by the Heller outcome!

"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus

[tobyhill]

Before they challenge it they should ask Obama what he thinks about it, whether it's Constitutional or not?

Get him on record.

[westmichman]

Whenever I see the name Charlton Heston, I raise my gun in salute (if one of them is close enough).

[angkor]

>>>>Does anyone have any statistics on the open carry law in Virginia,

No stats, but I can tell you anecdotaly that there used to be a lot of crime here in Northern Virginia from across the Potomac in DC (a 5 to 10 minute car ride).

Not anymore.

[epow]

Hey Dick - what was so bad about OK Corral? The bad guys wound up dead. I don't see anything "frightening" about that.

The "old west" was not the exceptionally violent place that it is made out to be in films and novels. The most famous gunfight of that era was the OK Corral fight in which IIRC 3 men were killed and several others wounded. Today in many US cities 3 gangbangers killed is just a minor bump in the average day's murder rate.

While it's true that old west tent city boom towns in places where gold or silver was found experienced considerable crime and violence, the vast majority of western towns and villages of that era were virtually crime free for one or more significant reasons. Either the people were peaceful, law abiding citizens, and/or the fact that most of them were armed and able to defend themselves and their property kept violence and lawlessness to a level that any town or city in the US today would be overjoyed to achieve.