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NYT - "The Hard Work of Gun Control

GarandFan

By GarandFan
in Illinois Politics

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GarandFan Member

GarandFan

Posted
Posted

Other than the support these guys have for "limiting gun possession" in general, note the bolded section ...

 

 

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/11/opinion/11sun1.html

 

Editorial

The Hard Work of Gun Control

Published: July 9, 2010

 

Thirteen days ago, the Supreme Court undermined Chicago’s ban on handguns by applying the Second Amendment to the states, ruling that people have a right to protect their homes with a gun. Four days after that, Chicago passed another handgun restriction that edged right up to the line drawn by the court. And on Tuesday, a group of gun dealers and enthusiasts sued the city again to overturn the new law.

 

Bullets are flying on city streets, but the vital work of limiting gun use has become a cat-and-mouse game. Beleaguered citizens deserve better from both sides.

 

We strongly disagreed with the reasoning that led the court to find an individual right to bear arms in the Second Amendment, ending handgun bans in Washington, D.C., in 2008 and everywhere else last month. Nonetheless, the law of the land is now that people have a constitutional right to a gun in their home for self-defense.

 

That right can be limited, the court explicitly said, with reasonable restrictions. But it provided very little guidance as to what is reasonable, leaving lawyers, lawmakers and judges to thrash it out in a bog of lawsuits that could take many years to clear.

 

Cities and states have a need to be extremely tough in limiting access to guns, but they need to do it with more forethought than went into the Chicago ordinance. Lawmakers there sensibly limited residents to one operable handgun per home, with a strict registration and permitting process. But residents are not allowed to buy a gun in the city. They must receive firearms training, but ranges are illegal in the city. Chicago lawmakers sloughed off on the suburbs the responsibility to regulate sales and training. As a result, more people will travel more miles to transport guns.

 

The law is likely to draw heightened equal-protection scrutiny from skeptical judges at all levels. Chicago would have been better off allowing gun sales under the strict oversight of the police department, which could then better check the backgrounds and movements of every buyer and seller. The District of Columbia passed a largely similar ordinance last year after its law was struck down by the court. But it permits sales at the few gun shops in the district, and a federal judge upheld that ordinance after it was challenged. It could stand as a model for other cities.

 

As flawed as the Chicago regulation is, the lawsuit challenging it is entirely over the top. It disputes virtually every aspect of the law as a violation of the Second Amendment and poses ludicrous hypothetical situations to show that everyone needs a gun. “If an elderly widow lives in an unsafe neighborhood and asks her son to spend the night because she has recently received harassing phone calls,” the lawsuit complains, “the son may not bring his registered firearm with him to his mother’s home as an aid to the defense of himself and his mother.” Putting granny in the middle of a neighborhood firefight is preferable to having her simply call the police?

 

The gun lobby is going to attack virtually every gun ordinance it can find, if only to see what it can get away with now. (Last week, the same lawyers who brought the Chicago and Washington cases sued North Carolina, challenging a law that prohibits carrying weapons during a state of emergency.)

 

Lawmakers need not match the lobby’s obduracy. Cities and states should counter with tough but sensible laws designed to resist legal challenges and keep gun possession to a minimum.

 

A version of this editorial appeared in print on July 11, 2010, on page WK7 of the New York edition.

Don Gwinn Member

Don Gwinn

Posted
Posted
Garand beat me to it--there's nothing hypothetical about that situation at all. Mr. Sledge has that problem exactly. Do the NYT editors think plaintiffs are chosen at random?
GarandFan Member

GarandFan

Posted
  • Author
Posted

Garand beat me to it--there's nothing hypothetical about that situation at all. Mr. Sledge has that problem exactly. Do the NYT editors think plaintiffs are chosen at random?

 

I suspect they'd LIKE to think that, or think that the contents of the complaint are just fabrications. But for the NYT editorial to make such an ignorant mistake ...

 

I wonder if they will correct themselves, or at least publish a letter or two correcting them.

Don Gwinn Member

Don Gwinn

Posted
Posted

Garandfan's letter was concise and excellent, but look what my friend Matt wrote on his blog (Matt is a cop from By-Gawd-Texas):

 

I recently got notification from the District Attorney's office that I didn't need to come in to testify on a Stalking case that I filed last year.

 

The victim had called 911 and met me at the police department. I arrived to find a distraught woman, who wanted to go inside the locked P.D. very quickly. I interviewed her, and learned that her baby's daddy, Jimmy Joe Bob, had called and threatened to kill her, and her family. He was very specific about how he was going to do it, and what tool he was going to use, and what members of her family he was going to kill. He made special mention of her new boyfriend. She knew that he would do it, she said, because she had been with him for a long time, and he was a very violent man. I checked his criminal history, and found that there was evidence to support this. While we talked, her phone blew up with voicemail messages. He left message after message, saying that he was en route . . . .

 

You should really read the whole thing. The anecdote alone is worth the read.

 

http://maypeacebewithyou.blogspot.com/2010/07/just-call-cops.html

Here's the fact, coming from a patrol officer who's given this some study to get a graduate degree in criminal justice: Police VERY RARELY interrupt crimes in progress. Police are out patrolling mostly so that they can see things developing, and so that they can be in the neighborhood to respond when something does happen. That is, we are reactive. Laughing it off and telling Mom to just call the cops on a situation that may very well never happen, but which is likely enough to make her scared about it, is the kind of insensitivity that makes me wonder if the author of such a comment ever had a mother. As the officer who must make the decision between trying to justify his camping out at this ONE house for more than a few minutes longer, or patrolling for the other 835 people on my beat*, I can tell you that it would seem like the best idea is to make sure that someone in the house could take care of Mama.
Nomad Member

Nomad

Posted
Posted

Cities and states have a need to be extremely tough in limiting access to guns...

 

That's odd. Forty-one "shall issue" carry states don't seem to have such a need. Some states like Alaska, Arizona, Vermont, and possibly Utah in the not too distant future, definitely have shown they have no need "to be extremely tough."

 

Cities and states should counter with tough but sensible laws designed to resist legal challenges and keep gun possession to a minimum.

 

That's not what the Second Amendment reads and that's not what our Founding Fathers have stated.

Xwing Member

Xwing

Posted
Posted

Check this out and tell me what you think:

 

http://www.examiner....e-of-his-mother

 

 

Good rebuttel of their stupid whine, Don. The NYT editors are so liberal they might as well be in Cuba. How could they write such drivel? Now of only Don's articles could make it to the number of people that the NYT takes for granted! Maybe someday... :)

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