Supreme Court ruling shows how far gun rights have come

By: Glenn Harlan Reynolds

July 4, 2010

Topping last week's legal stories was the Supreme Court's decision in McDonald v. Chicago, holding that the Second Amendment -- which the Supreme Court just two years ago interpreted to protect an individual right to own a gun -- also protects the individual right to own a gun against state and local interference.

Many people were unimpressed, regarding this as a statement of the obvious. Others -- like Rush Limbaugh -- were alarmed, noting that what should have been an obvious statement of a right specifically protected in the Constitution nonetheless made it by a bare 5-4 vote in the Supreme Court.

Both of these views have their merit, but because I'm a glass-is-half-full kind of guy, let me offer a positive lesson from this experience, one with relevance for today's motivated Tea Party activists and depressed conservatives and libertarians alike. Because the story of the Second Amendment, and of gun rights generally, over the past two decades is a story that offers hope for those interested in protecting and restoring liberty in all sorts of areas.

Nowadays, it's hard to find a Democrat outside of the party's deepest-blue sanctuary cities who will argue against private ownership of guns. Even Al Sharpton reports that 90 percent of his talk show listeners are happy with the Supreme Court's decision in favor of an individual right to arms. But less than 20 years ago, it was a different story altogether.

President George H.W. Bush talked about gun rights, but didn't much mean it. His successor, President Clinton, was even more negative.

Gun control was on the march, gun control proponents said it was only a matter of time before America joined other "civilized" countries by banning the private ownership of firearms, and laws at both the state and federal level were getting tighter. Morton Grove, Ill., had banned handguns, and had seen that ban upheld by the U.S. Court of Appeals. (The Supreme Court declined to hear the case).

In 1994, House Speaker Tom Foley stopped the clock when the time for voting ran out on the Assault Weapons Ban, allowing the whips to round up a couple of votes and let the bill pass. The Assault Weapons Ban was seen by many -- among both its proponents and its opponents -- as a step toward a complete gun ban.

There was much gloom and doom talk among libertarians, conservatives and gun rights supporters generally. This was it. We were on the slippery slope to tyranny. But then something happened: People stopped talking, and started acting.

In November 1994, the Democrats lost big in Congress, a defeat that Clinton himself attributed to the passage of the ban and the way it energized gun rights activists to vote, donate and campaign. Speaker Foley lost his seat, along with Rep. Jack Brooks, who chaired the House Judiciary Committee that produced the bill.

In each election thereafter, the gun issue hurt the Democrats, and Democratic politicians learned to avoid gun control bills if they wanted to keep their seats. When the Assault Weapons Ban expired, there was no significant support for renewing it.

Meanwhile, activists and scholars began looking at the Second Amendment more closely. A Supreme Court opinion endorsing an individual-right view of the Second Amendment seemed nearly impossible in 1998; in 2008 it happened.

Two years later, the court has extended it to the states. The massive campaign by gun control groups -- and their media allies, who were legion -- to "de-normalize" gun ownership, and present it as something dangerous, deviant and subject to regulation at the whims of the government, has failed, with the Supreme Court explicitly saying that gun ownership by private citizens is a fundamental part of our system of liberty.

So in little more than 15 years, we've seen an amazing turnaround on an issue where the "establishment" side had broad support from politicians (in both parties, really) and almost universal support from the media. Gun control now is nearly dead as an issue, and the "establishment" view that the Second Amendment didn't protect any sort of individual right, but merely a right of states to have national guards, did not get the support of a single Supreme Court justice.

So what's the lesson for today? It's that activism matters.

Now the issue on which activists differ from the establishment is the size of government. Politicians (in both parties, really) are pretty happy with big government. In this, they have the near-universal support of the media (now using covert e-mail lists to agree on how to slant their stories).

But if people care about shrinking government as much as gun rights activists care about protecting the Second Amendment, then this situation, too, can see a turnaround.

For the sake of the country, it had better.

Glenn Harlan Reynolds, a law professor at the University of Tennessee, hosts "InstaVision" on PJTV.com.

“You cannot legislate criminals, they are going to be criminals no matter what,” said Ald. Ed Smith, 28th. “And the people who intend to do crime, they are going to do it in whatever manner they can. They are going to get a gun wherever they can. And they are going to use it. And they are not going to register their gun.”

[Right, so just go ahead and pass an unutterably stupid law anyway.]

After making a similar acknowledgement, Alderman Deborah Graham, 29th Ward, issued a plea: "I would also encourage gang bangers who get their guns unlawfully to stop getting them unlawfully."

[What do you say to that? She's actually asking criminals to...stop acting like criminals. Well, gee, if only we'd have known that's all it would take. Pathetic. Simply pathetic.]

"We're going to increase the penalties to make sure that our communities are safe," she said.

[SAFE? Is she insane? If not, she is at least terminally stupid. No matter how much all the factual data show that this approach only reduces the number of LEGAL gun owners, and does NOTHING to deter thugs from getting, carrying, and USING guns, these idiots simply refuse to "get it."]

When the new law takes effect in 10 days, people who want to keep a handgun in their homes and be on the right side of the law will have to obtain Chicago firearm permits. To get one, they must take firearms training and not have convictions for a violent crime, unlawful use of a firearm or two or more charges of driving under the influence of drugs or alcohol.

Each weapon would have to be registered, and those with permits will only be able to register one weapon each month.

[Aaaah, now we get to the real agenda - registration of your firearms. So that, once the government trolls know what guns you own, they can then declare them to be "unapproved" and demand that you hand them over....just as they already did in California under a similar registration scheme.]

Guns could only be kept in the home, and each per permit holder in the home could only have one handgun in readily operable condition at a time. The law does not consider garages, porches or exterior stairs as part of a home.

And the ordinance outright bans gun sales, firing ranges and shooting galleries in the city. The ban on sales already faces a potential challenge in federal court, and other aspects also are expected to trigger lawsuits. But aldermen said they are ready for those battles.

[Yep, they're ready - but let's face it, battling the good citizens of Chicago beats having to battle Chicago's street gangs, who are heavily armed in spite of the previous ban.]

“I can’t imagine why anyone would oppose these reasonable regulations, these reasonable restrictions, but I know there will be those who believe that this right to bear arms is unrestricted and that anyone can have any weapon anywhere at all,” Ald. Joe Moore, 49th, told the mayor during the council meeting. “I will stand with you defending this ordinance against the inevitable attacks from the far right wing, and I hope that wisdom and rationality prevails in our court system and that these laws will be upheld.”

[He actually spoke these words with a straight face? "Far right wing?" and "Reasonable restrictions" he says? That would be like saying that the Founders were the "far right wing" - oh, wait, liberal Democrats already DO think that about the Founders! And then there is the phrase "reasonable restrictions" - imagine if we used the the same approach to put "reasonable restrictions" on free speech. We would require every personal computer, cell phone, radio and TV be registered with the state - AFTER you pass a background check and take a training class. And provided the devices are on the "approved" list, of course.]

During the discussion, several aldermen said the narrow 5-4 ruling that effectively tossed out handgun bans in Chicago and Oak Park would not have been made if justices were more familiar with urban violence.

“I have to say it: I think the Supreme Court is wrong, just like they’ve been wrong before,” said Ald. Leslie Hairston, 5th.

“They were wrong about segregation. They were wrong about the right to vote. And I think…when we look back years and years ahead, we will see that they were wrong about this as well.”

But Alderman Edward Burke, 14th Ward, who in 1982 shepherded the gun ban through the council, said that maybe it was the council that got it wrong in the first place. 

[No, you're kidding, right? The Chicago City Council might have actually gotten something wrong? Say it ain't so, Shoeless Joe]

“Perhaps I and some of the others that voted in favor of this ordinance exhibited too much ardor for the ban and we perhaps should have been more sensitive to weighing the rights of legitimate citizens to have weapons,” Burke said.

[Think about this last comment - Alderman Burke actually sees it as a novel idea to finally consider the "rights of legitimate citizens to have weapons" - do you need any more proof of what out-of-control liberal lunacy leads to?