SAF CALLS CHICAGO TRIBUNE PLEA TO REPEAL 2A ‘UNCONSCIONABLE’

BELLEVUE, WA – The Chicago Tribune’s call for repeal of the Second Amendment following the historic Heller Decision is an “unconscionable attack on the entire Bill of Rights and the freedoms it protects,” the Second Amendment Foundation said today.

In an editorial published on the day after the Supreme Court handed down its 5-4 ruling, the newspaper called the Second Amendment an “anachronism” that should be repealed. The newspaper supported its argument by falsely claiming that a 1939 case, U.S. v Miller, established the amendment as a “collective right” that applied only to service in some type of militia.

“The Chicago Tribune’s editors have demonstrated an appalling short-sightedness,” said SAF founder Alan Gottlieb. “If they are so willing to abandon one civil right for an entire class of American citizens, what’s next? Perhaps they would strip some citizens of their First Amendment rights to free speech or religion. Heaven help us should the Chicago Tribune editorial board one day decide that they don’t care for the editorial slant of their competitors at the Sun-Times, and call for a restriction on that newspaper’s freedom of the press.

“Once you make it acceptable to destroy one civil right,” Gottlieb observed, “it does not take a very big leap to embrace limitations on, or the abolition of, another civil right.

“Not once, in all the years that gun rights organizations have been vilified in the editorial columns of the Tribune and other newspapers did anyone from the firearms community suggest we should repeal the First Amendment,” he stated. “Unlike elitist newspaper editors, gun owners understand that the Bill of Rights is an all-or-nothing document, not a civil rights buffet from which we can pick and choose the rights we want to enjoy and those for which we have no stomach.

“We have always known the Second Amendment affirmed an individual civil right, and a truly objective reading of history by the Chicago Tribune would – if they had any notion of objectivity – lead them to the same conclusion,” Gottlieb concluded. “A generation of parents and grandparents of those now writing such nonsense in the Tribune risked, and all too frequently lost their lives to defend all of the freedoms enumerated in the Bill of Rights. The Tribune editors may as well just spit on their graves.”
SAF FILES LAWSUIT CHALLENGING CHICAGO’S HANDGUN BAN
BELLEVUE, WA – Following Thursday’s 5-4 ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court in the case of District of Columbia v. Heller that the Second Amendment protects an individual civil right to keep and bear arms, and that a municipal gun ban violates that right, the Second Amendment Foundation (SAF) and the Illinois State Rifle Association (ISRA) filed a federal lawsuit challenging the City of Chicago’s long-standing handgun ban. The case is McDonald v. City of Chicago.

“Chicago’s handgun ban has failed to stop violent crime,” SAF founder Alan Gottlieb stated. “It’s time to give the Constitution a chance.”

In addition to SAF and ISRA, plaintiffs include Chicago residents Otis McDonald, a retiree who has been working with police to rid his neighborhood of drug dealers, and who wants to have a handgun at his home; Adam Orlov, a former Evanston police officer; software engineer David Lawson and his wife, Colleen, a hypnotherapist, whose home has been targeted by burglars. Attorney Alan Gura, who argued the District of Columbia challenge before the high court, and Chicago area attorney David G. Sigale, represent the plaintiffs.

“Our goal,” Gura said “is to require state and local officials to respect our Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms. Chicago’s handgun ban, and some of its gun registration requirements, are clearly unconstitutional.”

“The right to defend our homes and families against those who would do them harm, whether a random criminal, violent ex-domestic partner, or other wrongdoer, is one of the principles upon which America was founded,” Sigale said. “It is time the City of Chicago trust its honest, law-abiding residents with this Constitutional right.”

“Chicago's registration scheme cries out for common-sense reform,” ISRA Executive Director Richard Pearson added.

Under the gun law currently in place, firearms must be re-registered annually.

“Each time,” Gura said, “a tax is imposed, forms must be filled out, photographs submitted. A person who owns more than one gun will find herself or himself constantly in the process of registering each gun as it comes due for expiration. If registration is to be required, once is enough.”

He further noted that Chicago’s bizarre requirement that guns be registered before they are acquired often times makes registration impossible. The penalty for failure to comply with the registration scheme is that a gun not re-registered on time can never be registered again. Gura likened it to a requirement to dispose of a car if it is not re-registered on time with the Department of Motor Vehicles.

Find out more by visiting: www.ChicagoGunCase.com