Now that the Supreme Court agrees that there’s a Second Amendment, the one about how the right to keep and bear arms shan’t be infringed, lower courts are feeling free to load this constitutional ammo as well.
Ohio’s Supreme Court just ruled 5 – 2 against Cleveland’s requirement for registering handguns and against a ban on assault weapons, upholding a state law banning onerous gun control.
The losing side argues that the Ohio law violates the home rule rights of municipalities. Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson says, “Our inability to enforce laws that are right for our city flies in the face of home rule and takes power away from the people at the local level.”
If some mugger with a gun is lurching at you in a dark alley, and you’ve got no gun — or if some armed lunatic is shooting into a crowd, and you’ve got no gun — you may wish you had one. And probably would not find consoling the thought, “Well, at least these local victim-disarmament laws are ‘right for the town.’”
The Ohio Supreme Court ruled that Ohio’s anti-victim-disarmament law “does not unconstitutionally infringe on municipal home rule authority.”
Yes. If constitutional protections of individual rights could be countermanded at will, not only the 2nd and 14th Amendments but also all other explicit and implicit constitutional protections of our rights would be dead letters whenever any burg says so.
But there can’t be a constitutional right to ignore constitutional rights.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
11 replies on “Keep Firing”
Recently in Fairfield, CA two women joggers were attacked by a pack of three dogs, including a bull mastiff. They were saved by neighbors who shot the attacking dogs after the women had been seriously injured.Without the guns in the hands of law abiding folks, the women would have ben mauled to death.Local politicians and bureaucrats in their quest for power, demonstrate a chronic lack of common sense (just as they do at State and Federal levels)
I get steamed up whenever I see our media loosely tossing about the term “Assault Weapon”. An assault weapon is a fully automatic weapon used by military forces. A semi-automatic rifle that simply “looks mean” is not an assault weapon. None of the rifles the media mislabels as assault weapons are not automatic weapons.
While on the subject, you see movies and TV programs on a daily basis depicting criminals blazing away indiscriminately with fully automatic weapons. The public is conditioned to believe this happens in real life. In actuality you can could the number of actual automatic weapon crimes in this nation since World War II on your fingers, and not use all of them.
Oops, that should be: None of the rifles the media mislabels as assault weapons are automatic weapons.
I am also concerned that Hillary Clinton is working w/ the United Nations to push a treaty that permits the UN to require all arms be registered. With the UN of course. The ultimate goal of such actions, since gun grabbers run the UN agencies pushing this treaty, is patently obvious. They seek to deny us our constitutional right to keep & bear arms, by using an international treaty to start the process. Seems some in our government think they can ‘give away’ our constitutional rights, by signing an international treaty.
Why would any president want to destroy a constitutional right via such a back door move? What is it with those who scream about constitutional rights, while they also seek to circumvent &/or dilute that documents actual meaning & relevance?
There IS a constitutional right to ignore constitutional rights, but is the right of each individual to do so for only their own rights, not the right of any jackleg mayor.
Harold Hongju Koh. Martin R. Flug ’55 Professor of International Law and Legal Adviser, U.S. Department of State has decided that his particular hammer is just the right fit to hit on the head of any problem in the US, including that pesky US Constitution. All he has to do is to render the Constitution void is by shilling to give away American sovereignty, and apparently his buddy, Presbo is just of the mind to do it by treaty, since Presbo has also decided that he knows better than the founders. These folks forget that they are not divinely annointed to office, only renting.
Ahh, won’t it be nice to be in the wild west again where we can all be gunslingers.
Well said Paul. You’re right on!
Correct me if I am wrong, but “Rights” belong to “The People”, and are not applicable to organizations or semi-governmental entities such as “municipalities”…
Paul: Does it follow that if the state courts can overrule a violation of individual freedom and constitutional rights by local governments; then the federal courts are right to protect individual freedom and constitutional rights from violations by state government?
To Mayor Frank Johnson, how about moving to a city who’s “home rule” is that blacks should be considered property of slave owners, and new blacks in town can be seized for use. Or do you object to some home rules?