The United States Supreme Court (SCOTUS) may have decided the most important gun case in history on June 28, 2010. A previous landmark 2008 gun case, DC vs. HELLER, held that the Constitution actually meant what the Founding Fathers thought they meant when they drafted it! The Bill of Rights only began to be applied to the states due to the 14th Amendment, enacted after the Civil War to protect newly freed citizens from the tyranny of Southern regimes that deployed de jure force of law and de facto intimidation to perpetuate slavery.

In MCDONALD VS. CHICAGO, the Court acknowledged that the 14th Amendment aims at firearms restrictions enacted against Blacks and enforced by armed white mobs often via the noose-end of a rope! Otis McDonald, the 76 year-old African-American Plaintiff in the case, is a neighborhood activist targeted because he stood up to thugs that lay claim to the streets of Chicago.

Chicago required registration in order for Mr. McDonald to keep a hand gun in his home but also prohibited the registration of handguns. Thus, McDonald sued Chicago and declared independence from a de facto ban on handguns.

The criteria upon which SCOTUS determined that the right to keep and bear arms applies against state governments relates to whether gun rights are fundamental to a civilized society. Amazingly, Mayor Richard Daley, thinks that disarming citizens in the City of the Big Shoulders is just a “common sense” measure because other civilized nations also have enacted severe gun control laws.

Judging by the high murder rate in Chicago, Mayor Daley’s “common sense” may seem like blatant racism to black people like Otis McDonald. Just as Daley’s father defied Martin Luther King by displaying his middle finger to Civil Rights marchers in front of City Hall in Chicago, Chicago’s current machine boss has vowed to keep fighting to keep guns out of the hands of honest people.

Chicago is busy attempting to thwart gun ownership with new legal barriers and the Mayor urged countries like Mexico to sue the U.S. gun industry in the World Court!

Washington has a firearms preemption law that prevents municipalities from enacting gun laws that are more restrictive than laws enacted by the state legislature. Expect to see lawsuits challenging California laws against semi-automatic rifles; i.e., “assault weapons” that look like fully-automatic M-16s.

Washington State’s legislature has recently considered enacting assault weapon bans similar to the one in California. The Second Amendment protects “militarily useful” firearms. Future court decisions may protect us against folks like our own Sen. Kline (another former SDS affiliate who graduated into state politics) by deciding in the future that the Second Amendment protects “assault weapons“. Military style semi-autos, high-capacity magazines and/or .50 caliber rifles- legal in Washington and most other states- are all prohibited in California.

The Obama administration is presently moving toward a UN Treaty on Small Arms and expects the courts might uphold executive orders backed up by international treaty commitments that would arguably preempt the U.S. Constitution. Abridging Americans’ gun rights is now one of the most important planks in the agenda of the United Nations and one reason Supreme Court nominations launch battles that become hotly contested fire fights!

Christian Legal Society loses case

On the same day the McDonald decision came out, the Court issued the Christian Legal Society vs. Martinez (UC Hastings) decision that removed an important cultural and legal landmark. The Christian Legal Society encourages Christian law students to remain faithful to Christ. The pressure to conform to certain standards of “professionalism” can be intense in law school.

Clubs have always been defined by the ability to determine their own membership but the University of California’s Hastings College of the Law has policies that force the organization to accept officers and voting members who hold beliefs and engage in conduct that opposes CLS’s purpose of developing Christian character in law students and providing Christian outreach and witness on campus. Therefore, the law school, located in San Francisco, takes a position that is very unusual for most universities and thereby inhibited the group’s ability to define and express its message.

Justice Kennedy voted with the majority in erasing a strong legal principle militating in favor of putting all campus groups on an equal playing field in which each group decides its own criteria for determining membership qualifications. CLS was seeking special treatment, according to the majority. Does this mean that all clubs on campus must now allow new members when the new members are opposed to the fundamental principles for which the group stands? Do Jewish campus groups have to let Hamas sympathizers join? Must socialist clubs allow members from Young Americans for Freedom?

While some Americans ask why some of us use the harsh language of “partesian” warfare, citizens in nations that have lost their freedom are looking at what Americans will do next as the land of the free struggles to remain free.