Guns and the Law Part I

Last week the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the landmark case McDonald v. Chicago. Mr. McDonald lives in the city of Chicago and wants to own a handgun for self and home protection. His neighborhood is one of the most violent in the city but Chicago’s draconian gun laws makes handgun ownership nearly impossible for the average citizen. When the Supreme Court ruled in DC v. Heller that the gun laws in the District of Columbia were too strict and denied citizens their 2^nd Amendment Rights, Mr. McDonald filed a similar suit.

Some may wonder why a new lawsuit was required after the Heller decision. Chicago and DC had similar gun laws, making handgun ownership illegal in most cases. The difference here is that DC is on federal land, while Chicago belongs to the State of Illinois. The first ten amendments to the constitution, popularly known as the Bill of Rights, were written to restrict what the federal government could do. For example, in the 18^th Century, many European countries had official, government backed religions. The 1^st Amendment denies the federal government the power to establish an official American religion. But the Bill of Rights didn’t apply to the states and their local municipalities.

Several states had established churches and southern states were able to ban abolitionist literature. In the 1833 case Barron v Baltimore, the Supreme Court ruled that the Bill of Rights provided “security against the apprehended encroachments of the general government — not against those of local government.” It took a civil war, the reconstruction era 14^th Amendment and Supreme Court rulings before the Bill of Rights became applicable to the states piecemeal.

In the next installment of Guns and the Law we’ll look at Article I of the 14^th Amendment and how it applies to the McDonald v. Chicago case.

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