At the end of January this year, 76-year-old Otis McDonald took a reporter from the Chicago Tribune on a crime-themed tour of his Morgan Park neighborhood. He pointed out the yellow brick bungalow that was a haven for drug dealers. Mr. McDonald also showed the reporter the alley where five years ago he saw a teenager pull out a gun and take aim at a passing car.

Going around the corner, he pointed to the weed-covered side of the road where three thugs once threatened to kill him.

Mr. McDonald said:

I know every day that I come out in the streets, the youngsters will shoot me as quick as they will a policeman.  They’ll shoot a policeman as quick as they will any of their young gangbangers.

Mr. McDonald told the reporter that, in order to defend himself, he needed a handgun. That’s the reason that, in April of 2008, the retired maintenance engineer decided  to become the lead plaintiff in a lawsuit challenging Chicago’s 28-year-old handgun ban. Shortly after that, he went to the Chicago Police Department and, under his attorneys’ direction, he applied for a .22-caliber Beretta pistol, setting the lawsuit into motion. 

That lawsuit made it all the way to the highest court in the land.

The Supreme Court Monday ruled in McDonald v. Chicago that the Second Amendment’s “right to bear arms” does indeed supercede municipal and state bans.  In the 5-4 decision (with Justices John Roberts, Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Anthony Kennedy in the majority), the court  reinforced the ruling of D.C. v. Heller, two years ago, which found that Washington D.C.’s gun ban was unconstitutional.  Stephen Breyer,Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor, and John Paul Stevens all dissented.

Since Washington is a federal city, it was not clear whether the ruling applied to states and localities.  This perceived legal ambiguity paved the way for yesterday’s historic ruling.

McDonald v. Chicago was brought in order to answer two important questions: 1)  whether the Heller ruling could be incorporated to the states (rendering all state and city gun bans unconstitutional) and  2)  whether it could be done so through the Privileges and Immunities Clause of the 14^th Amendment.

In the majority opinion, Justice Samuel Alito ruled that the Heller decision could be incorporated to the states through the 14th Amendment, but rejected the use of the Privileges and Immunities Clause. Instead, he chose to apply gun rights through the Due Process Clause, which establishes that egal proceedings must be carried out fairly and in accord with established rules and principles.

Justice Alito also wrote:

It is clear that the Framers . . . counted the right to keep and bear arms among those fundamental rights necessary to our system of ordered liberty.

Alito said the court was very clear in its 2008 decision that it was not casting doubt on such long-standing prohibitions on gun possession by felons and the mentally ill, or keeping firearms out of “sensitive places” such as schools and government buildings:

We repeat those assurances here.  Despite municipal respondents’ doomsday proclamations, [the decision] does not imperil every law regulating firearms.

Justice Clarence Thomas was the only one in favor of using the Privileges Clause.  He wrote in his concurring opinion:

I cannot agree that it is enforceable against the States through a clause that speaks only to “process”.  Instead, the right to keep and bear arms is a privilege of American citizenship that applies to the States through the Fourteenth Amendment’s Privileges or Immunities Clause …

The Gun Owners of America, which is growing in membership as a more conservative alternative to the NRA, predicted “tremendous ramifications” for gun-control laws in California, New York and elsewhere.

Kristen Rand, legislative director for the Violence Policy Center, in a press release following the announcement, dramatically proclaimed:

People will die because of this decision. It is a victory only for the gun lobby and America’s fading firearms industry … The gun lobby and gun makers are seeking nothing less than the complete dismantling of our nation’s gun laws in a cynical effort to try and stem the long-term drop in gun ownership and save the dwindling gun industry.

Chicago Mayor Richard Daley will hold a press conference at 1 p.m. central time today.  Expect more Liberal whining to ensue.

What absolutely got Liberals’ goat in this case,was the fact Mr.  McDonald presented a strongly sympathetic figure that the court and average Americans could relate to: an elderly man who wanted to buy a gun in order to protect himself from the low-life thugs preying upon his neighborhood.  It also gave Liberals a Mylanta moment that Mr McDonald happened to be a Black American who liked to hunt.

Even before the trial began, legal experts said that Mr. McDonald was poised to become an enduring symbol.

Nicholas Johnson, a law professor at Fordham University, predicted:

Regardless of how this case goes, Mr. McDonald’s name is set in legal history, at the same level as Roe v. Wade and Plessy v. Ferguson.  Schoolkids are going to recognize that in this case, something dramatic happened.

Dramatic indeed..and very satisfying.

Sources:  dailycaller.com, chicagotribune.com, washingtonpost.com