Contempt of court George Wallace style
June 29, 12:23 PM Minneapolis Gun Rights Examiner John
Pierce
"To what purpose are powers limited, and to what purpose is that
limitation committed to writing, if these limits may, at any time, be
passed by those intended to be restrained?" - Chief Justice John
Marshall (Marbury v. Madison)
Hard on the heels of yesterday’s Supreme Court ruling in McDonald v.
Chicago that the Second Amendment to the US Constitution protects an
individual right to bear arms for self-defense and that the right thus
protected is incorporated against state and local governments, Chicago
Mayor Daley expressed his contempt for both the Court and the citizens
whose rights he has trampled.
In an afternoon press conference, Daley announced that the city would
enact new ordinances making it as difficult as possible to purchase and
own a gun in Chicago. During his rant, he promised to seek ways to
attack the right to bear arms from the supply side, vowing to go after
manufacturers and crack down on gun shops and gun shop owners. He also
noted that only “responsible adults” would be allowed to purchase or
possess guns and left open the extremely disturbing question of who gets
to determine which citizens are responsible and therefore 'worthy' of
civil rights.
After all, when you hear Mayor Daley proclaim his intentions to subvert
the clear ruling of the Supreme Court, it is hard not to remember
Governor George Wallace standing in the doorway of the University of
Alabama's Foster Auditorium blocking access to African-American students
Vivian Malone Jones, Dave McGlathery and James Hood after the 1954
Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education.
Then, as now, a seasoned politician felt his opinion superseded the
rights of citizens and was willing to use the power of their office to
deny those rights to citizens they deemed 'unworthy.'
View more news videos at: http://www.nbcchicago.com/video.
But as I listened to Mayor Daley equate gun owners with “drug thugs” and
chastise the federal government for not doing more to make legal gun
ownership more difficult, I found it incredibly ironic. This is the
mayor of a city whose 28 year absolute ban on handgun ownership has
completely disarmed law-abiding citizens and yet, on a recent weekend in
Chicago, with the ban in full effect, there were 54 shootings which
resulted in 10 deaths, including a baby girl.
The problem in Chicago is not guns in the hands of law-abiding citizens.
It never was. The problem is crime … crime driven by poverty, and
hopelessness, and drug abuse, and all the social ills that accompany
them. And because Mayor Daley, in his 21 year tenure, has not been
willing or able to address these very difficult problems, he seeks to
blame gun owners.
This elitist defiance should not surprise those familiar with Chicago
politics and the antics of the Daley administration but it should serve
as a grim reminder to gun owners and civil libertarians that despite the
victories in Heller and McDonald, the legislative and judicial battles
are far from over.
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