Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Legal Commentary Blogs -> Discriminations

Legal Commentary

: Discriminations

The Bill Of Rights? Not Applicable In Chicago & Illinois...

Whatever one may think of the recent Heller decision holding that the Second Amendment protects an individual, not a collective, right to own and bear arms, and thus that Washington D.C.?s sweeping gun ban was unconstitutional (I like it, even if George Will and Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III don?t), that issue is now settled law, at least until and unless new Obama justices reverse it.

According to Mayor Richard Daley of Chicago, however, the Bill of Rights, and by logical extension the Fourteenth Amendment (which many believe applied most of the Bill of Rights to the states), is not applicable in the Windy City, a prominent victim of gun control violence. (HatTip to Alphecca, via InstaPundit)

Daley has maintained the ruling striking down D.C.?s handgun ban cannot be extended to states and cities not under federal control.

If Governor Wallace and his segregationist colleagues had been smarter, they could have made that same argument back in the 1950s and 1960s. Oh, wait. They did.

Since Obama is a product of the same Chicago that produced the, er, revisionist scholarship of its mayor, it will be interesting to see whether the new president believes the Constitution?s protections are limited to the federal government and its territories.

Full post as published by Discriminations on December 19, 2008 (boomark / email).