Free Republic

More Guns, Less Crime: Since Illinois began issuing concealed-carry permits this year, robberies, burglaries, car thefts and, yes, even murder, are down significantly. Last month, when an 86-year-old Crestwood, Ill., man decided to visit his local phone store, he arrived to find a robbery underway. After staying outside to keep others from entering the store, he saw the suspect fleeing through a back door. He pursued the suspect, legal firearm in hand, stopped him, then held him until police arrived to make the arrest. The actions of the unidentified law-abiding citizen were made possible by Illinois becoming the 50th and...

Otis McDonald, the man whose name will be forever synonymous with Second Amendment activism for his victory over Chicago’s handgun ban, died today, according to his nephew, Dr. Frederick Jones, who spoke with this column. He was 80. Mr. McDonald, who was 76 at the time the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in McDonald v. City of Chicago that its handgun ban violated the Second Amendment, and that the right to keep and bear arms was incorporated to the states via the 14th Amendment, had been suffering from a lengthy illness. Mr. McDonald was the key figure in a lawsuit brought...

Otis McDonald, one of several headliners scheduled to appear at this weekend’s 27th annual Gun Rights Policy Conference (GRPC) in Orlando, Fla., has suffered a serious head injury and is in intensive care at a Chicago-area hospital, Gun Rights Examiner has learned. Alan Gottlieb, executive vice president of the Bellevue-based Second Amendment Foundation, notified members of the SAF Board of Directors during their meeting in Orlando today. McDonald was scheduled to speak during the Saturday awards luncheon, which also features U.S. Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) and former Ambassador Donald A. Mahley.McDonald apparently fell and suffered a serious head injury. He...

Gun Control: Chicago's new police superintendent blames Alaska's ex-governor for inner-city gun violence and crime, and says gun-rights advocates are racist. Disarming victims doesn't prevent crime, sir. Speaking to the choir, literally, about gun control, Garry McCarthy, former police chief of Newark, N.J., told an audience at St. Sabina Church in the Windy City about leaving a homicide scene in Newark, returning home and flipping on the TV to find an episode of "Sarah Palin's Alaska." "She was caribou hunting and talking about the right to bear arms," McCarthy said. "Why wasn't she at the crime scene with me?" We...

Second Amendment: In the "living Constitution" era, the Supreme Court rediscovers original intent and rightly rules that the right to bear arms applies to all Americans just as the rest of the Bill of Rights does. It's hard to conceive how the justices could have decided otherwise. But by the narrowest of margins — 5-4 — they have reaffirmed that keeping and bearing arms is an inalienable and individual right like speech and religion, and that it applies to all individuals as the Founding Fathers intended. Why anyone thinks the Second Amendment does not apply to all Americans is a...

Second Amendment: Chicago is deciding whether to prosecute a great-grandfather and Korean War veteran under its handgun ban. He refused to be a victim, and now there's one less armed thug roaming the streets. What's the problem? If the 80-year-old vet living on the city's West Side didn't have the gun the city said he shouldn't have, he and his 83-year-old wife and 12-year-old great-grandson might have joined those victims of gun violence about whom gun-control advocates constantly chirp. The vet obtained the gun in violation of the city's handgun ban after a prior incident in which the couple was...

Otis McDonald, 76, stands before the Supreme Court, which Tuesday heard arguments in his suit to overturn Chicago's handgun ban Gun Rights: Otis McDonald, 76, an Army vet who lives in a high-crime area of Chicago, thinks the Constitution gives him the right to bear arms to protect himself and his wife as he protected his country. We think so too. On Tuesday, the Supreme Court heard arguments on behalf of four Chicago residents led by homeowner McDonald, the Second Amendment Foundation and the Illinois State Rifle Association to overturn Chicago's three-decade-old ban on owning handguns. In a 5-4...

Down here in West Texas, I keep a handgun in my car and usually one somewhere on my person. My habits are not novel: For I live among people who understand and value our inherent right to keep and bear arms, as well as our right to self-defense. Yet in many parts of the country, like Chicago, where handgun ownership was banned in 1982, the norm is quite different. In the Windy City, men like Otis McDonald, a 76 year-old retiree, tell stories of being prisoners in their own homes: unable to defend either their property or their lives because...

Otis McDonald is a great American. In the 1960s, he wore an Army uniform and served with distinction. He then moved home to Chicago were he began a family. Meanwhile, he busied himself during the days with work at his local union. Eventually, he led the effort to integrate his union and ended up as president of the union. In recent years, McDonald looked around Chicago and decided that he could do something about the shadowy areas of the city outside the bright lights. He went into impoverished, crime-riddled neighborhoods as a community activist. Yet his work inevitably meant he...