Using Guns to protect Liberty...

wpage · 03-01-2010, 02:51 PM

Here is a clip from CATO institute on the current court ruling...
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Cato-...m_medium=email

OklahomaBrian · 03-01-2010, 11:23 PM

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35649914...me_and_courts/

It looks like tomorrow is the big day at the Supreme Court for gun owners in Chicago.Tomorrow the Court hears arguments about Chicago's handgun ban.It will be interesting to see if the Court is still pro 2nd amendment or not.

petesusn · 03-02-2010, 12:09 AM

We'll see. Here's hoping but with the new recent addition to the court I'm kind of pessimistic. Of course six of the nine were appointed by Republican Presidents.

petesusn · 03-02-2010, 12:21 AM

As I mentioned in another post, six of nine justices were appointed by Repub presidents. We'll have to wait and see.

hogger129 · 03-02-2010, 05:57 AM

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100301/...hicago_gun_ban

CHICAGO – A couple worries that burglars who tried to break in when the wife was home alone will return. A retiree fears the drug dealers and junkies just outside his window will attempt — again — to steal what he spent a lifetime earning. And a businessman wants to protect himself as he could when he was a police officer.

Together, they are the face of the most serious challenge yet to Chicago's 28-year-old handgun ban.

On Tuesday, the four will take their seats inside the U.S. Supreme Court as their attorneys argue a lawsuit that bears their names: David and Colleen Lawson, Otis McDonald and Adam Orlov.

The four plaintiffs are not stereotypical gun rights advocates. They don't represent the agenda of any national group or organize rallies. Instead they represent average Chicagoans — the kind of people that opponents of the city's ban say should be allowed to protect themselves from gun violence.

"Some people want to stereotype advocates in any case, to make them look like a bunch of crazies," said Alan Gura, a Virginia attorney who will argue the case. "But these are plaintiffs who reflect the city in which they live."

Chicago's ban on the sale and possession of handguns has been weathering legal challenges for years. But it gained newfound attention after the Supreme Court in 2008 struck down a similar handgun ban in the District of Columbia. The court now plans to decide whether the ruling on D.C., a city with unique federal status, should apply to local and state laws, too.

The lead plaintiffs in the Chicago suit decided to fight the city's gun ban for different reasons.

For the Lawsons, it stemmed from a scare in 2006, when Colleen Lawson was home alone with the flu and three men tried to jimmy open her back door. They ran off when they saw her through a window.

"That's how close they were to getting in," said Lawson, 51.

The Lawsons believe a handgun would allow them to protect their family and give them the kind of peace of mind Colleen Lawson had as a child, when she knew her grandmother kept a pistol in her apron.

"I knew without any doubt my grandmother would be able protect us," she said. "I can't say that to my children."

Seventy-six-year-old McDonald knows the feeling.

He came to Chicago from Louisiana when he was 17, as part of the Great Migration of blacks. He worked his way up from a janitor to a maintenance engineer, a good job that allowed him and his wife to buy a house on the city's far South Side in 1972, where they raised their family.

In recent years, McDonald, now a grandfather, has watched the neighborhood deteriorate, the quiet nights he once enjoyed replaced by the sound of gunfire, drunken fights and shattering liquor bottles.

Three times, he says, his house has been broken into — once the front door was wide open and the burglars still out front when his wife and daughter came home from church. A few years ago, he called police to report gunfire, only to be confronted by a man who told him he'd heard about that call and threatened to kill him.

"I just got the feeling that I'm on my own," said McDonald. "The fact is that so many people my age have worked hard all their life, getting a nice place for themselves to live in ... and having one (handgun) would make us feel a lot more comfortable."

Orlov didn't grow up with guns and doesn't hunt. But his four years as a police officer only underscored his belief that people hurt by the city's handgun ban are those obeying it.

"The law only prohibits the actions of those who are law-abiding," said Orlov, 40. "The more law-abiding the more likely you are to be vulnerable to the activities of criminals."

The Lawsons and Orlov reached out to Gura after reading that he was representing a man in the case challenging the Washington, D.C. ban, and all three went to the Supreme Court to watch oral arguments in that case.

Otis was put in touch with Gura after driving 200 miles to the Illinois capital, Springfield, for a gun-rights rally — a last resort, he said, after decades of attending neighborhood watch meetings only to see nothing change.

Mayor Richard Daley said Monday that he was confident Chicago would prevail and stressed that cities and states should be able to decide how best to protect their citizens.

"We have the right for health and safety to pass reasonable laws dealing with the protection and health of the people of the city of Chicago," Daley said.

It's uncertain whether the plaintiffs' involvement in the case will help their cause.

"The Supreme Court decides issues, it does not decide for or against particular people," said Benna Ruth Solomon, deputy corporation counsel in Chicago's law department's appeals division.

Even so, the four Chicagoans are part of the case for a reason.

Selecting sympathetic plaintiffs is certainly is "an effective communications strategy to show the public that many people who support gun rights and guns are not kooks," said Adam Samaha, who teaches constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School.

And it might help sway the justices, too.

For one thing, Samaha said, while the stories of the individual plaintiffs would not be relevant if justices' questions only centered on the original intent behind the right to bear arms and equal protections. But they might be important if the questions turned to how today's courts enforce such rights.

The four are not the only plaintiffs — the Second Amendment Foundation, an anti-gun control group, and the Illinois State Rifle Association are also named — but they are the face of the case.

Had the National Rifle Association been the lead plaintiff, the lawsuit would be about a pro-gun rights group that wants to "use the courts to achieve some policy victory," Samaha said.

"Better to have Otis than the NRA," said Samaha said.

Gura said the lives of his clients are — and should be — an important part of the case.

"The right to have guns for self-defense is vitally important to a broad range of people, and the plaintiffs in this case reflect that reality. ... Otis and Colleen's experiences demonstrate that crime in Chicago is not a theoretical concept," he said.

Zane71464 · 03-02-2010, 06:37 AM

What a shame, I believe I'd have several shotguns about my home.

carver · 03-02-2010, 06:48 AM

I hope that Chicago loses this one. But in the mean time I would invest in the best home defense gun out there, the shot gun.

islenos · 03-02-2010, 09:56 AM

"In court papers, lawyers for the city of Chicago pointed out that 402 of the 412 firearm homicides occurred with the use of handguns in 2008."

After 26 years of the ban there was 402 handgun related homicides. It sure doesn't seem to me that it is working.

red14 · 03-02-2010, 10:00 AM

How many of those were home protection? And, how many were gang banger shoot outs?

Terry_P · 03-02-2010, 10:36 AM

McDonald was on FOX and had one simple question: How come the gang members all have hand guns and I can't own one to defend myself and my family?

The one justice I'm worried about it also one of the most conservative Scalia. His position on states rights worries me. I personally don't think the states have the right to violate the US Constitution just because they feel like it. The 2nd amendment is an enumerated right as are the other amendments and I'm hoping he sees it that way as well.

wpage · 03-02-2010, 03:55 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by red14

How many of those were home protection? And, how many were gang banger shoot outs?

Exactly and no law will change those statistics. Felons are felons

hogger129 · 03-02-2010, 04:57 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by islenos

"In court papers, lawyers for the city of Chicago pointed out that 402 of the 412 firearm homicides occurred with the use of handguns in 2008."

After 26 years of the ban there was 402 handgun related homicides. It sure doesn't seem to me that it is working.

And I'd like them also to point out how many of those 402 handgun homocides occured as a result of illegally-obtained handguns.

I mean to me it just reminds me of the Federal Assault Weapons Ban. It really did nothing to reduce crime. Criminals just turned to other means to commit crimes.

Now... in states that have lenient gun laws, are there high crime rates? How about Vermont for example. Minnesota's crime rates have gone down alot since they passed concealed carry.

hogger129 · 03-02-2010, 05:03 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Terry_P

McDonald was on FOX and had one simple question: How come the gang members all have hand guns and I can't own one to defend myself and my family?

The one justice I'm worried about it also one of the most conservative Scalia. His position on states rights worries me. I personally don't think the states have the right to violate the US Constitution just because they feel like it. The 2nd amendment is an enumerated right as are the other amendments and I'm hoping he sees it that way as well.

Anything not mentioned in the Bill of Rights or covered by Federal law is supposed to be left at the jurisdiction of the states. But the 2nd amendment reads "The right of the people to keep and bear arms." It does not say what kind of arms, it just says arms. I personally think neither the states nor Feds have a right to define what "arms" we can keep & bear. Arms in this case would most likely be something that is used to defend oneself, therefore, banning handguns or any firearms is really a violation of the Bill of Rights. Even banning automatics is a violation of the Bill of Rights. But the argument with full autos is in the interest of public safety - so we don't ban them, we just regulate them. I see no concerns with public safety by allowing law abiding citizens to keep & bear handguns or any other firearms - such as handguns in this case.

hogger129 · 03-02-2010, 05:08 PM

If I were him, I would want my case heard before the US Supreme Court. They already struck down the ban in DC. Why wouldn't they strike down the ban in Chicago? Just because DC is not a "state" and Chicago is?

This is not a state's rights issue. It's a Federal issue. They got no right in denying that man's right to keep and bear arms.

wpage · 03-02-2010, 05:29 PM

When they get thier heads out of their rear ends and see the truth of the matter. The criminals dont care about gun control laws. No matter what law they pass inner city drug and crime thugs will continue to kill with illegal guns.
Like the founders conceived armed law abiding citizens (militia) uphold the law.

03-01-2010, 02:51 PM	#1
wpage Advanced Senior Member Join Date: Aug 2009 Posts: 1,471	Using Guns to protect Liberty... Here is a clip from CATO institute on the current court ruling... http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Cato-...m_medium=email __________________ "You shall recieve power" Acts 1:8 W -->

03-01-2010, 11:23 PM	#2
OklahomaBrian Member Join Date: Jul 2009 Posts: 39	Well it looks like tomorrow is the big day at the Supreme Court http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35649914...me_and_courts/ It looks like tomorrow is the big day at the Supreme Court for gun owners in Chicago.Tomorrow the Court hears arguments about Chicago's handgun ban.It will be interesting to see if the Court is still pro 2nd amendment or not. __________________ beatus homo qui invenit sapientiam charta pardonationis se defendendo

03-02-2010, 12:09 AM	#3
petesusn Senior Member Join Date: Sep 2009 Location: San Joaquin Valley, Ca. Posts: 614	Re: Well it looks like tomorrow is the big day at the Supreme Court We'll see. Here's hoping but with the new recent addition to the court I'm kind of pessimistic. Of course six of the nine were appointed by Republican Presidents. __________________ Self Defense: A basic human right The 2nd Amendment, ratified in 1787, refers to the National Guard, which was created 130 years later, in 1917. A man who may be asked in this century what he did to make his life worthwhile...can respond with a great deal of pride and satisfaction, "I served in the U. S. Navy." John F. Kennedy VFW Life Member

03-02-2010, 12:21 AM	#4
petesusn Senior Member Join Date: Sep 2009 Location: San Joaquin Valley, Ca. Posts: 614	Re: Using Guns to protect Liberty... As I mentioned in another post, six of nine justices were appointed by Repub presidents. We'll have to wait and see. __________________ Self Defense: A basic human right The 2nd Amendment, ratified in 1787, refers to the National Guard, which was created 130 years later, in 1917. A man who may be asked in this century what he did to make his life worthwhile...can respond with a great deal of pride and satisfaction, "I served in the U. S. Navy." John F. Kennedy VFW Life Member

03-02-2010, 05:57 AM	#5
hogger129 Advanced Senior Member Join Date: Nov 2009 Posts: 4,064	Will Handgun Ban be overturned in Chicago? http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100301/...hicago_gun_ban CHICAGO – A couple worries that burglars who tried to break in when the wife was home alone will return. A retiree fears the drug dealers and junkies just outside his window will attempt — again — to steal what he spent a lifetime earning. And a businessman wants to protect himself as he could when he was a police officer. Together, they are the face of the most serious challenge yet to Chicago's 28-year-old handgun ban. On Tuesday, the four will take their seats inside the U.S. Supreme Court as their attorneys argue a lawsuit that bears their names: David and Colleen Lawson, Otis McDonald and Adam Orlov. The four plaintiffs are not stereotypical gun rights advocates. They don't represent the agenda of any national group or organize rallies. Instead they represent average Chicagoans — the kind of people that opponents of the city's ban say should be allowed to protect themselves from gun violence. "Some people want to stereotype advocates in any case, to make them look like a bunch of crazies," said Alan Gura, a Virginia attorney who will argue the case. "But these are plaintiffs who reflect the city in which they live." Chicago's ban on the sale and possession of handguns has been weathering legal challenges for years. But it gained newfound attention after the Supreme Court in 2008 struck down a similar handgun ban in the District of Columbia. The court now plans to decide whether the ruling on D.C., a city with unique federal status, should apply to local and state laws, too. The lead plaintiffs in the Chicago suit decided to fight the city's gun ban for different reasons. For the Lawsons, it stemmed from a scare in 2006, when Colleen Lawson was home alone with the flu and three men tried to jimmy open her back door. They ran off when they saw her through a window. "That's how close they were to getting in," said Lawson, 51. The Lawsons believe a handgun would allow them to protect their family and give them the kind of peace of mind Colleen Lawson had as a child, when she knew her grandmother kept a pistol in her apron. "I knew without any doubt my grandmother would be able protect us," she said. "I can't say that to my children." Seventy-six-year-old McDonald knows the feeling. He came to Chicago from Louisiana when he was 17, as part of the Great Migration of blacks. He worked his way up from a janitor to a maintenance engineer, a good job that allowed him and his wife to buy a house on the city's far South Side in 1972, where they raised their family. In recent years, McDonald, now a grandfather, has watched the neighborhood deteriorate, the quiet nights he once enjoyed replaced by the sound of gunfire, drunken fights and shattering liquor bottles. Three times, he says, his house has been broken into — once the front door was wide open and the burglars still out front when his wife and daughter came home from church. A few years ago, he called police to report gunfire, only to be confronted by a man who told him he'd heard about that call and threatened to kill him. "I just got the feeling that I'm on my own," said McDonald. "The fact is that so many people my age have worked hard all their life, getting a nice place for themselves to live in ... and having one (handgun) would make us feel a lot more comfortable." Orlov didn't grow up with guns and doesn't hunt. But his four years as a police officer only underscored his belief that people hurt by the city's handgun ban are those obeying it. "The law only prohibits the actions of those who are law-abiding," said Orlov, 40. "The more law-abiding the more likely you are to be vulnerable to the activities of criminals." The Lawsons and Orlov reached out to Gura after reading that he was representing a man in the case challenging the Washington, D.C. ban, and all three went to the Supreme Court to watch oral arguments in that case. Otis was put in touch with Gura after driving 200 miles to the Illinois capital, Springfield, for a gun-rights rally — a last resort, he said, after decades of attending neighborhood watch meetings only to see nothing change. Mayor Richard Daley said Monday that he was confident Chicago would prevail and stressed that cities and states should be able to decide how best to protect their citizens. "We have the right for health and safety to pass reasonable laws dealing with the protection and health of the people of the city of Chicago," Daley said. It's uncertain whether the plaintiffs' involvement in the case will help their cause. "The Supreme Court decides issues, it does not decide for or against particular people," said Benna Ruth Solomon, deputy corporation counsel in Chicago's law department's appeals division. Even so, the four Chicagoans are part of the case for a reason. Selecting sympathetic plaintiffs is certainly is "an effective communications strategy to show the public that many people who support gun rights and guns are not kooks," said Adam Samaha, who teaches constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School. And it might help sway the justices, too. For one thing, Samaha said, while the stories of the individual plaintiffs would not be relevant if justices' questions only centered on the original intent behind the right to bear arms and equal protections. But they might be important if the questions turned to how today's courts enforce such rights. The four are not the only plaintiffs — the Second Amendment Foundation, an anti-gun control group, and the Illinois State Rifle Association are also named — but they are the face of the case. Had the National Rifle Association been the lead plaintiff, the lawsuit would be about a pro-gun rights group that wants to "use the courts to achieve some policy victory," Samaha said. "Better to have Otis than the NRA," said Samaha said. Gura said the lives of his clients are — and should be — an important part of the case. "The right to have guns for self-defense is vitally important to a broad range of people, and the plaintiffs in this case reflect that reality. ... Otis and Colleen's experiences demonstrate that crime in Chicago is not a theoretical concept," he said. Last edited by hogger129; 03-02-2010 at 05:58 AM..

03-02-2010, 06:37 AM	#6
Zane71464 Advanced Senior Member Join Date: Aug 2009 Location: Ohio NRA Member Contributor Posts: 5,350	Re: Will Handgun Ban be overturned in Chicago? What a shame, I believe I'd have several shotguns about my home. __________________ Two Words; "Simple Man", song by Charlie Daniels sums up my thoughts on a "few things"!

03-02-2010, 06:48 AM	#7
carver TFF Moderator/Host Join Date: Jul 2008 Location: DAV, Deep in the Pineywoods of East Texas, just west of Shreveport, LA Contributor Posts: 11,216	Re: Will Handgun Ban be overturned in Chicago? I hope that Chicago loses this one. But in the mean time I would invest in the best home defense gun out there, the shot gun. __________________ Y'all be safe now, ya hear! Lamentations Chapter 5: 1. Remember, O LORD, what is come upon us: consider, and behold our reproach. 2. Our inheritance is turned to strangers, our houses to aliens. 3. We are orphans and fatherless, our mothers [are] as widows. 5. Our necks [are] under persecution: we labour, [and] have no rest. 16. The crown is fallen [from] our head: woe unto us, that we have sinned! 21. Turn thou us unto thee, O LORD, and we shall be turned; renew our days as of old.

03-02-2010, 09:56 AM	#8
islenos Advanced Senior Member Join Date: Mar 2004 Location: West Texas Posts: 1,244	Re: Will Handgun Ban be overturned in Chicago? "In court papers, lawyers for the city of Chicago pointed out that 402 of the 412 firearm homicides occurred with the use of handguns in 2008." After 26 years of the ban there was 402 handgun related homicides. It sure doesn't seem to me that it is working. __________________

03-02-2010, 10:00 AM	#9
red14 Advanced Senior Member Join Date: Aug 2009 Location: N FLA Posts: 3,913	Re: Will Handgun Ban be overturned in Chicago? How many of those were home protection? And, how many were gang banger shoot outs? __________________ I never argue, I state my opinion, and support my position.

03-02-2010, 10:36 AM	#10
Terry_P Advanced Senior Member Join Date: Mar 2008 Location: NH Posts: 2,513	Re: Using Guns to protect Liberty... McDonald was on FOX and had one simple question: How come the gang members all have hand guns and I can't own one to defend myself and my family? The one justice I'm worried about it also one of the most conservative Scalia. His position on states rights worries me. I personally don't think the states have the right to violate the US Constitution just because they feel like it. The 2nd amendment is an enumerated right as are the other amendments and I'm hoping he sees it that way as well. __________________ NRA and NAHC Life "Both oligarch and tyrant mistrust the people, and therefore deprive them of their arms." -Aristotle

03-02-2010, 05:08 PM	#14
hogger129 Advanced Senior Member Join Date: Nov 2009 Posts: 4,064	Re: Will Handgun Ban be overturned in Chicago? If I were him, I would want my case heard before the US Supreme Court. They already struck down the ban in DC. Why wouldn't they strike down the ban in Chicago? Just because DC is not a "state" and Chicago is? This is not a state's rights issue. It's a Federal issue. They got no right in denying that man's right to keep and bear arms.

03-02-2010, 05:29 PM	#15
wpage Advanced Senior Member Join Date: Aug 2009 Posts: 1,471	Re: Using Guns to protect Liberty... When they get thier heads out of their rear ends and see the truth of the matter. The criminals dont care about gun control laws. No matter what law they pass inner city drug and crime thugs will continue to kill with illegal guns. Like the founders conceived armed law abiding citizens (militia) uphold the law. __________________ "You shall recieve power" Acts 1:8 W