Freedom Line Blog

In the landmark 2008 decision in District of Columbia v. Heller, the United States Supreme Court at long last affirmed that the Second Amendment protects an individual right of citizens to keep and bear arms.  Unfortunately, the decision technically only applied to federal jurisdictions such as Washington, D.C., and set aside the question of whether the 50 states were similarly prohibited from infringing on that critical right. 

Through an unjustified quirk of constitutional jurisprudence, courts over the past 150 years have picked and chosen which provisions of the Bill of Rights they consider “fundamental,” and therefore applied against state infringement.  Most provisions have received such recognition, and it obviously defies logic to contend that the Second Amendment, which was among the most important in the minds of the Founding Fathers, is somehow “not fundamental.”  Despite this, the left has creatively and dishonestly made that very assertion.

Today, however, the Court announced that it will hear the case of McDonald v. City of Chicago.   At issue in that case is a Chicago law broadly prohibiting handguns, taxing firearms generally, and various other infringements on the right to keep and bear arms.  Accordingly, the Supreme Court now has the opportunity to do the right thing and protect Americans’ Second Amendment rights against the ever-growing menace of government infringement.