A Supreme Court Ruling On Heller Must Be Quick, Decisive And Specific

Perhaps it’s in anticipation that the U.S. Supreme Court will rule in the District of Columbia vs. Heller case that gun ownership is an individual right and so there is a rush across the country to try to enact stricter gun laws before that happens. This seems to be happening all across the country, from big cities to small towns and in some cases candidates for political office don’t give Americans much promise for a secure future.

District of Columbia vs. Heller resulted when a security guard (Heller) decided to challenge the District of Columbia’s total ban on handguns and virtual ban on all guns, as being unconstitutional. Heller won that case in a federal District Court, which was then appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which accepted the case and heard oral arguments this past March 18, 2008.

The Supreme Court needs to rule quickly, they need to be very decisive in their ruling and it should be quite specific. The specificity is where I’m afraid any decision will come up short. From my position that ruling needs to be in favor of an individual’s right to own guns. They should dispense with “reasonable controls”, which most experts feel the Court will say should be carried out. They need to provide some definition of what is reasonable, even though it is believed that the courts will hammer that out.

Reasonable is not what some are doing across this land that is taking away our God-given right to defend ourselves and our constitutional right to keep and bear arms.

Only days after the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Heller, a tiny town in Western Maine, confiscated a town employee’s legally held handgun and then proceeded to create new laws banning any kind of weapons on town property going against that state’s constitution.

In the city of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, now nicknamed “Killadelphia”, where the mayor, Michael Nutter and some members of the city council, have been trying to pass gun control laws, with not a lot of success. The state of Pennsylvania is the ruling authority on gun control laws but that doesn’t seem to mean much of anything to the mayor.

In a recent press release from the Second Amendment Foundation, SAF says Nutter is nuts and he and his council are “acting like vigilantes” and setting up their own “fiefdom”.

Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter and the City Council have defied state statute by enacting several anti-gun measures, essentially “acting like urban vigilantes under color of law,” the Second Amendment Foundation said today.
“How can Mayor Nutter and the council expect anyone else, especially criminals, to obey the law if they don’t live up to the same standard,” SAF founder Alan Gottlieb wondered. “Just because the mayor doesn’t like the fact that the state legislature retains sole authority over gun laws does not give him or the city council any right to essentially set up their own fiefdom. What kind of example does that set? What does it accomplish?”

A regular reader of the Black Bear Blog sent me an email yesterday about the actions of those in his home state of Pennsylvania. Needless to say, he seemed quite distraught.

Tom, This is why I’m seriously considering moving out of PA all together. The nuts are taking over, and now they have a head Nutter. I suggested to you before that Philadelphia was anti gun to the extreme. So we tried to engage the community in pro gun dialog and this is the response!!

Also today. Michelle Malkin is carrying a story about how New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg, Nanny Bloomberg as Malkin calls him, along with Mayor Menino of Boston and other mayoral nannies, have strong-armed Wal-Mart into taking away more of our civil liberties, while placing better tracking on the sales of their guns, among other restrictions.

…..calls for turning a more watchful eye on firearm sales, including videotaping sales of guns and conducting criminal background checks on store clerks who handle guns.

It also calls for keeping a record each time the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives links a gun bought at Wal-Mart to a crime. If a person who buys a gun linked to a crime were to return to a Wal-Mart to buy another gun, the purchase would be flagged. It would then be up to the store whether to permit the purchase.

When fully put into effect, the agreement would also prohibit the sale of a gun to someone whose background check comes back with inconclusive results. In many states, people are permitted to buy firearms even if a background check comes back with inconclusive results.

And as usual, this agreement with Wal-Mart will have no affect on gun crimes within the city of Philadelphia, New York or anywhere else in the state.

Of the “top ten” most commonly traced firearms in crimes (according to that same government report), seven are cheaply-made, small-caliber handguns, two are ubiquitous 9mm service pistols common among police, civilian shooters, and criminals, and just one is a long-arm of any kind.

Wal-Mart does not sell handguns and statistically rifles and shotguns are used in only 8% of gun murders and you can be sure they weren’t bought at Wal-Mart.

Without a strong ruling by the Supreme Court, one has to wonder about the future of gun rights in this country. McCain says he supports the Second Amendment but so do Clinton and Obama. McCain’s record on gun rights has been far superior to that of Clinton and Obama but his propensity to cave into the left, his pride in being a “maverick”, doesn’t leave me real confident that he wouldn’t start giving away our rights in order to achieve other goals.

Clinton is very much anti-gun, believing, as do most gun control types, that attacking the rights of lawful citizens somehow has an affect on crime. We know she is a strong supporter of a ban on so-called assault weapons, which has more definitions than I think any other term known to mankind.

We are now beginning to learn more and more about Barack Obama’s real position on guns. He hates them and anyone who owns them, according to remarks he has made of late. He has spoken publicly that he wants to get rid of concealed carry as well as shut down the manufacture and sale of handguns.

I said from the onset about D.C. vs. Heller that this case could loom as the biggest factor in the upcoming presidential campaign and have the biggest impact on our society since Roe v. Wade. I can only hope that the Supreme Court will see the need to do more than simply rule that the Second Amendment is an individual or collective right.

Tom Remington