Chicago – Gun-rights advocates say that a US Supreme Court ruling today will embolden them to challenge gun-control laws in cities across the country.
The ruling says that the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms applies to every jurisdiction in the country – throwing doubt on a Chicago law that bans handguns in the home.
But lessons from Washington, which had a similar law declared unconstitutional in 2008, suggest that if tough gun-control laws are rewritten carefully, they can survive constitutional scrutiny.
In both the Chicago and Washington cases, the Supreme Court rulings focused on the right to possess a handgun in the home for self-defense. But the rulings also made it clear that the court would not stand in the way of reasonable local gun laws outside the home.
After their gun ban was struck down, Washington lawmakers adopted tougher requirements for anyone seeking a gun license, including a four-hour class on firearm safety and passing an exam. It also enacted an assault-weapons ban and required registration of all firearms in the home.
These narrower gun laws have been consistently upheld despite numerous attempts to overturn them.
What Next for Chicago?
In all likelihood, Chicago will follow Washington by introducing legislation that increases the restrictions on gun ownership – including some of the same restrictions put in place by Washington. In a press conference Monday, Chicago Mayor Richard Daley said that the city’s legal counsel was currently redrafting the handgun ordinance “in a reasonable and responsible way to protect Second Amendment rights and protect Chicagoans from gun violence.”
Chicago also has the option of creating a database of all guns sold in the city, which would require owners to bring in their guns for test firing by police. The ballistics information would then be stored in a database for use in the event that the gun was ever used in a crime.
“There’s a variety of laws short of handgun bans that could be adopted, and we would say are legally defensible,” says Juliet Leftwich of Legal Community Against Violence, a San Francisco-based law center advocating gun-violence prevention.
But the more cities pursue these types of laws, the more they will encourage gun-rights advocates to seek to strike them down, experts say.
Monday’s ruling “opens up any state or local gun laws that go too far – that are not truly effective in terms of public safety and are designed to discourage gun ownership,” says Alan Gura, a lawyer who won the Washington case and represented the plaintiffs who challenged Chicago’s handgun ban.
“Some laws will be in trouble and some will survive,” Mr. Gura says.
Gun-rights advocates are expected to track Chicago’s next steps. If the city “takes an obstructionist approach to resist the [Supreme Court] opinion, they’re going to find out this will be a very expensive and lengthy process,” says Gura.
“They need to come to terms with reality. People have a meaningful constitutional right and [the city] needs to respect that and move on,” he says.
Chicago Mayor ‘Never Giving Up’
Yet if laws are written the right way, gun-control advocates are confident that they will withstand legal challenges. “All of those challenges should fail,” says Jonathan Lowy of the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence in Washington.
What works, he says, are “strong, common sense gun laws allowing law-abiding people guns in their home for self-defense.” The Second Amendment does not prohibit laws that were drafted to prohibit gun trafficking, he adds.
For his part, Mayor Daley said Monday that he was “never giving up” in this particular fight. He likened the National Rife Association to embattled oil giant BP: “If you think BP is tough to tackle, this is tough to tackle.”
Truthout Is Preparing to Meet Trump’s Agenda With Resistance at Every Turn
Dear Truthout Community,
If you feel rage, despondency, confusion and deep fear today, you are not alone. We’re feeling it too. We are heartsick. Facing down Trump’s fascist agenda, we are desperately worried about the most vulnerable people among us, including our loved ones and everyone in the Truthout community, and our minds are racing a million miles a minute to try to map out all that needs to be done.
We must give ourselves space to grieve and feel our fear, feel our rage, and keep in the forefront of our mind the stark truth that millions of real human lives are on the line. And simultaneously, we’ve got to get to work, take stock of our resources, and prepare to throw ourselves full force into the movement.
Journalism is a linchpin of that movement. Even as we are reeling, we’re summoning up all the energy we can to face down what’s coming, because we know that one of the sharpest weapons against fascism is publishing the truth.
There are many terrifying planks to the Trump agenda, and we plan to devote ourselves to reporting thoroughly on each one and, crucially, covering the movements resisting them. We also recognize that Trump is a dire threat to journalism itself, and that we must take this seriously from the outset.
After the election, the four of us sat down to have some hard but necessary conversations about Truthout under a Trump presidency. How would we defend our publication from an avalanche of far right lawsuits that seek to bankrupt us? How would we keep our reporters safe if they need to cover outbreaks of political violence, or if they are targeted by authorities? How will we urgently produce the practical analysis, tools and movement coverage that you need right now — breaking through our normal routines to meet a terrifying moment in ways that best serve you?
It will be a tough, scary four years to produce social justice-driven journalism. We need to deliver news, strategy, liberatory ideas, tools and movement-sparking solutions with a force that we never have had to before. And at the same time, we desperately need to protect our ability to do so.
We know this is such a painful moment and donations may understandably be the last thing on your mind. But we must ask for your support, which is needed in a new and urgent way.
We promise we will kick into an even higher gear to give you truthful news that cuts against the disinformation and vitriol and hate and violence. We promise to publish analyses that will serve the needs of the movements we all rely on to survive the next four years, and even build for the future. We promise to be responsive, to recognize you as members of our community with a vital stake and voice in this work.
Please dig deep if you can, but a donation of any amount will be a truly meaningful and tangible action in this cataclysmic historical moment.
We’re with you. Let’s do all we can to move forward together.
With love, rage, and solidarity,
Maya, Negin, Saima, and Ziggy