by Today’s New York Times ran an editorial entitled “The Hard Work of Gun Control”. While it was originally published on July 9th, they saw fit to re-run it in their Sunday paper just in case the elites didn’t read it the first time.
Like the dissenters in the McDonald decision, they are still fighting the Heller decision. It must have killed them to acknowledge that, “the law of the land is now that people have a constitutional right to a gun in their home for self-defense.”
They did concede that they thought Chicago’s new gun law was flawed and would likely be overturned.
Cities and states have a need to be extremely tough in limiting access to guns, but they need to do it with more forethought than went into the Chicago ordinance. Lawmakers there sensibly limited residents to one operable handgun per home, with a strict registration and permitting process. But residents are not allowed to buy a gun in the city. They must receive firearms training, but ranges are illegal in the city. Chicago lawmakers sloughed off on the suburbs the responsibility to regulate sales and training. As a result, more people will travel more miles to transport guns.
The law is likely to draw heightened equal-protection scrutiny from skeptical judges at all levels. Chicago would have been better off allowing gun sales under the strict oversight of the police department, which could then better check the backgrounds and movements of every buyer and seller. The District of Columbia passed a largely similar ordinance last year after its law was struck down by the court. But it permits sales at the few gun shops in the district, and a federal judge upheld that ordinance after it was challenged. It could stand as a model for other cities.
They thought the lawsuit against the new Chicago gun law was over-the-top.
It disputes virtually every aspect of the law as a violation of the Second Amendment and poses ludicrous hypothetical situations to show that everyone needs a gun. “If an elderly widow lives in an unsafe neighborhood and asks her son to spend the night because she has recently received harassing phone calls,” the lawsuit complains, “the son may not bring his registered firearm with him to his mother’s home as an aid to the defense of himself and his mother.” Putting granny in the middle of a neighborhood firefight is preferable to having her simply call the police?
I guess they never heard of the wait times for police response to 911 calls and that the police have no legal obligation to protect you.
They conclude with a call for “tough but sensible” laws and with a shot at Alan Gura and “the gun lobby”.
The gun lobby is going to attack virtually every gun ordinance it can find, if only to see what it can get away with now. (Last week, the same lawyers who brought the Chicago and Washington cases sued North Carolina, challenging a law that prohibits carrying weapons during a state of emergency.)
All I can say as a North Carolinian is “Go Alan!”