A Slippery Slope on Guns (Hurl, you will)

Truthdig / The Washington Post ^ | October 5, 2009 | Marie Cocco

[2ndDivisionVet]

Whatever significance is attached to Chicago’s failed bid to host the 2016 Olympics, it is of small importance to the rest of the country. More far-reaching and frightening is the Supreme Court’s decision to take up a case challenging the city’s ban on handgun ownership in the court’s new term, which begins this week.

The case is best considered a preview of coming attractions. The gun lobby, if it wins in the Supreme Court, is prepared to challenge every gun control law enacted at any level of government. It will usher in a scary season of assault on the common sense of citizens, law enforcement officials and others who believe that carrying today’s high-powered weapons in an urbanized, mobile—and angry—society is chillingly dangerous, and deadly.

Since the high court last year struck down the District of Columbia’s ban on handgun ownership, gun rights advocates have eagerly awaited a case that would extend the decision to states and localities. Because the District of Columbia is a federal entity, a different case was needed to establish that states and municipalities don’t have the right to impose broad gun restrictions. Chicago has become the test case.

Almost no one expects the conservative-leaning court to uphold Chicago’s prohibition, which applies only to handguns. Owners of rifles used in hunting, for example, are unaffected by the local law.

This distinction says much about the current state of gun politics. Only about a decade ago, gun rights activists often claimed that they wanted their weapons in order to hunt. They would evoke childhood memories of kinship that grew in the woods as one generation of hunters passed an ancient art on to another.

Those arguments seem as quaint now as the assumption that reasonable people do not bring firearms to political events featuring the president..(continued)

[2ndDivisionVet]

Sounds like she's parroting Mayor Bloomberg and the Brady people.

[SkyDancer]

All they have to do is sneak in a provision declaring gun control by the feds in some innocuous bill such like they’re doing with health care ... guns gone ....

[stephenjohnbanker]

GUNS RULE..................details at 11............

[jagusafr]

It’d be a waste of one of my Hornady Hydrashocks...

Colonel, USAFR

[Graybeard58]

More far-reaching and frightening is the Supreme Court’s decision to take up a case challenging the city’s ban on handgun ownership

Frightening indeed. I'm more frightened by the liberal mind set that comes up with this drivel than I could ever be of armed law abiding citizens.

[FlingWingFlyer]

I wonder what Marie Cocco would know about guns.

[BenLurkin]

The metrosexuals have nothing to fear from armed citizens......

......and the criminals will carry regardless.

[TChris]

Owners of rifles used in hunting, for example, are unaffected by the local law.

...as are violent criminals.

Get a clue. In fact, get two. They're small.

[E. Pluribus Unum]

More far-reaching and frightening is the Supreme Court’s decision to take up a case challenging the city’s ban on handgun ownership in the court’s new term, which begins this week.

Because the ban on handgun ownership has been so successful at thwarting violent crime.

[PsyOp]

Only about a decade ago, gun rights activists often claimed that they wanted their weapons in order to hunt.

That was never claimed by us "gun lobbyists". We all simply defended the practicality of semi-autos for hunting when the liberal "panty-waist" lobby told us we did not need them because they weren't of any use for hunting.

We only fought the battle using the terms they defined (probably a mistake in itself). But the basic argument never changed, it has only taken a decade to get the terms of the argument defined as they should be.

[Jacquerie]

Ms. Marie Cocco can write at length of her opposition to RKBA without mentioning the second amendment. It's a unique ability of the Left to ignore facts.

[SandWMan]

My crystal ball tells me the ruling will go something like this: The state/city cannot put a total ban on handguns in the home, but other restrictions, well they might be OK...leaving...no, kicking the door wide open for restrictions on the types of handguns or other guns, limits on types of ammunition and how much you can have, limits on actually carrying arms, licensing, etc. Everything but a “complete ban on handguns”.

[antiRepublicrat]

Liberals are always out there fighting for various rights, except this one. Strange.

[MrB]

Hurl, you will...

[Sudetenland]

A predictable, laughable, liberal's screed. Idiots like this need to be directly confronted with questions like, "How is it common sense when all data definitively illustrate the exact opposite of what you claim?" or "Isn't true that what you call "common sense" is really just your opinion based on your personal fear of firearms and not on any factual data or information at all?"

Then sit back a watch the sputtering and stuttering and personal outrage...all of which proves you right and them to be asses.

[Charles Martel]

It will usher in a scary season of assault on the common sense of citizens, law enforcement officials and others who believe that carrying today’s high-powered weapons in an urbanized, mobile—and angry—society is chillingly dangerous, and deadly.

Actually, today's chillingly dangerous, angry urbanized society is the reason that I own high-powered weapons.

[Mariner]

Keep and "Bear" arms is the standard the USSC must define.

My guess, they'll shy away on that definition and overturn the Chicago ban.

There'll be language about "unreasonable restriction" of the right...access to ammo...registration...etc.

However, I don't see the USSC saying one model of firearm is good, another bad.

I believe that the INTENT was that citizens could have whatever the modern infantry uses in any given era...M16 derivatives would be the standard now.

[Overtaxed Patriot]

Can you conceal carry a 2x4?

[Sudetenland]

I fear you are right. I don't believe even the conservative supreme's have a clear understanding of the intent of our founding fathers. I believe that men like Scalia are just as subject to the pressures of politics as any member of congress is.

Scalia's writings in the Heller case were...inadequate in their defense of the RTKBA. When I read Heller, I was greatly dissappointed by the decision.

[arthurus]

The lawlessness and tremendous rise in gun murders in the streets of DC after the previous Court Decision makes the prospect of extending the protection of the Court to the 2nd Amd in Chicago truly frightening. Chicago will be depopulated as the gun war of all against all consumes the City and daily sweeps must begin to collect the bodies from the sidewalks. Ms. Brady told me so and no one is wiser than Ms. Brady, except perhaps Ms. Sotomasomethingorother.