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Holster outrage; gun ban right call

Published: Sunday, July 11, 2010

Updated: Sunday, July 11, 2010 16:07

Chicago shot back at last month’s Supreme Court decision that restrained the government’s limit on gun ownership, while still allowing the government to have some regulation. That decision is as vague as it sounds.

The decision basically applied the Second Amendment to all states, and therefore inexplicitly overturned Chicago’s 30-year-old ban on handgun ownership, ruling that people have a right to protect their homes with a gun in any instance.

Just days after the decision, Chicago retaliated by passing another hand-gun restriction that limits its residents to one gun per household with a stricter registration and permit process.

The real kicker is that Chicagoans can no longer purchase a gun in the city, and gun training — a requirement to get the permit — is also not allowed in the city. And thus, people will have to travel farther not only to purchase the gun, but to also learn how shoot it.

Naturally, gun enthusiasts and dealers came in, guns blazin’, to sue Chicago. Just when they thought they had it made after the Supreme Court’s decision, the Chicago mayor shattered their dreams.

It’s difficult for us to fathom some of the on-going debate about gun control or to see the issue from the side of those who believe less-strict policies on gun ownership will ease gun violence.

Saying that allowing more people to own guns is a solution to gun violence is like saying that the solution to America’s obesity is to build more fast-food restaurants.

We can’t help but agree with Chicago’s decision and are angry that the Supreme Court would be so blind as to limit any state’s rights to make decisions on gun ownership.

Chicago has been a city plagued by gun violence, which is obviously why it initiated the ban in the first place.

Frankly, we wish Florida, or at least the high-crime cities in Florida, could have the same new laws as Chicago, if not even stricter.

States and cities have a variety of laws that restrict gun ownership, such as requiring mental health background checks or waiting periods before purchases.

The Supreme Court deeming gun ownership to be a fundamental right to individuals, like freedom of speech, will provide a means for those who want to challenge local laws, as it did for Chicago.

As of right now, Florida has reasonable gun laws. Permit requirements include proof of residency, minimum age, submitting fingerprints, passing a computerized instant background check, attending a certified handgun/firearm safety class and paying a required fee, according to the Florida Department of Agriculture Consumer services.

Yet gun violence still claims many lives in Florida.

The court’s interpretation of the Second Amendment could easily hurt any state’s laws concerning gun ownership.

If it were up to us, the federal government would only interfere with a state’s gun laws if the laws were too lenient, like Texas, where anyone and their mother could easily attain a gun.

The National Rifle Association was ecstatic about the decision, and anything that makes them happy scares us.

The decision will only give them more ammo to push the envelope for their agenda.

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19 comments

Anonymous
Tue Jul 13 2010 23:16
I like the cherry you placed on top at the end:

"The National Rifle Association was ecstatic about the decision, and anything that makes them happy scares us."

"Them" happy? Scares "Us?" As though members of the NRA are any different than non-members. I would be willing to bet that you pass members of the NRA every day out in the real world. People who are carrying concealed only feet away from you. Oh my god! Lock the doors! If s/he even looks at the gun in hers/his holster it may go off and kill everybody in the room!

The CFF posts the same drivel every year regarding the second amendment/ concealed carry/ guns in general, and in response to every article there are countless educated students who comment and completely debunk anything mentioned in the article. There are also very few responses in support of the article, those that do pop up are also debunked rather easily.

I understand firearms may be scary to people who arent familiar with them, like thunder . . . or lions. But if you take the time to learn about them you will find that they are a tool granted to us by the Constitution, they only go bang when you pull the trigger, and there are plenty of friendly gun owners who would be more than happy to show you the ropes . . . as long as you split the cost of ammo. :)

Anonymous
Tue Jul 13 2010 05:27
Wet behind the ears college students writing on an issue they have no freaking clue on.

What they should be writing about is how they are going to sue the school for failing to teach them anything other than how to be brainless dancing meat puppets on the end of their masters strings as they have demonstrated they are such witless brainless idiots just by writing such a pathetic unsubstantiated opine.

Yo bubba, dey didn't put their contact info or names up to get the data spanking they deserve. See anti gun advocates never provide the data to support their positions nor do they ever respond to the facts. Activism 101, were a person with an agenda to admit that those facts exist by acknowledging/responding, they would have to address them and in doing so, destroy a large part of the fantasy they continuously try to portray, that gun control works, when it never does. That is why da little pansies hide behind the anonymous "Our Stance".

Kinda like those newspapers in several states who in the last several years mistakenly believed they could intimidate law abiding gun owners by posting who or how many had concealed carry permits.

Funny how when we started digging how easy it was to get and start posting personnel information of ALL the newspapers employee's all over the internet as gun free zones, that a change of heart occurred (p.s we included senators and representatives info also), after all, it is public information and therefore perfectly legal. One certain PIA news editor had his info posted as a gun free zone on a local billboard, proudly displayed in a "cough, cough, better side of the tracks, lol, payback is da beetch!

Eventually though, these little Napoleons will want to be credited with their literary fiction and their names will become public. Then we will see if they are just mistaken, misguided, or truly the meat sack bag of bones brain dead puppets dancing at the ends of the masters puppet strings!

Student Reader
Tue Jul 13 2010 00:04
Yo Bambi
I don't think it is uncommon for publishers to have an opinions section. KN has posted over 70% of their July articles by "Staff" (calculate it 4 yourself)
At least CFF will admit when they are posting something clearly biased, unlike a publisher like KN who couldn't make an opinions section if they tried, because it would just be the whole blog.
Bambi Buchowski
Mon Jul 12 2010 18:05
What is "Our Stance"? Is that some sort of crypto-lingo for "too chicken to post my name"?

If you believe in this bilge, identify yourself, so we can avoid your crazy ass. (You'd be happier in France.)

Defender
Mon Jul 12 2010 13:20
NoneofYourBusiness said it better than I could. I'll just add "Why do you think many people have a growing contempt for the government, the law AND THE MEDIA?" To frame the issue in terms of what the People will be ALLOWED is to stand logic, reason and our republic's intended functioning on its head.
Anti-Socialisto
Mon Jul 12 2010 11:31
I was fired up to excoriate "Our Stance" for this so-called piece of journalism, but I see that Noneof Yourbusiness and I must have had a mind-meld as he put it exactly as I would have. Thanks to all the other comments pointing out the failure to understand basic Constitutional law and even grammar. The bigger question is, "Why is the author writing as "Our Stance", rather than posting his or her name? Is this the product of the editorial staff? If so, they get a FAIL.
SeanC
Mon Jul 12 2010 09:12
Check your facts. Texas law is just about identical to Florida! Both violate the 14th Amendment's Equal Protection Clause by denying those who don't have enough money a license to defend themselves. Or do you recommend that they blow a whistle and wait for a police officer to be dispatched while someone commits a rape or murder?
Noneof Yourbusiness
Mon Jul 12 2010 01:00
"Saying that allowing more people to own guns is a solution to gun violence is like saying that the solution to America’s obesity is to build more fast-food restaurants."And making such an ignorant statement shows you do not understand the issue at all. You, like so many anti-gun idiots seem determined to be purposely too obtuse to acknowledge that people can own guns without being criminals."Gun violence" isn't somehow magically different than over-all violence or other forms of violent crime. The guns don't cause it, criminals do. Increasing gun ownership does not increase criminal activity, and therefore does not increase violence of any kind, including gun violence. And all the empirical evidence bears this out. Chicago and DC, throughout the periods of their respective gun bans, had two of the highest murder and "gun violence" rates in the country, both of which increased, not decreased, after their bans were passed. Last year though, the first full year in DC without the ban in place, DC experienced the lowest murder rate it had seen in 30 years, despite all the BS hand-wringing over the "blood in the streets" that the anti-gun morons predicted.Compare the US violent crime stats with those of Great Britain and Australia. Both of those countries have over-all violent crime rates way above that of the US. Over the last 20 years, both countries have virtually banned private gun ownership. They are both also island nations with far better border protection to prevent smuggling than the US, and they both lack the constitutional controls on law enforcement that we have in this country, like legal bans on unwarranted searches and seizures, giving them far greater power to enforce bans than US law enforcement could ever have. And yet over that period both have seen massive increases in violent crime of all types, including gun crimes, those that such bans would most likely reduce if the concept of gun control was even remotely valid. Gun crime in the worst areas of Great Britain is up over 500%, and over 600% in Australia. Just last year in London, as was widely reported in their press (but not here, lest people see how miserably gun control is failing where it is applied), gun crime increased by 40% in JUST 6 MONTHS! And we're not talking about the cheap small low-powered handguns that are used in 95% of the gun crimes in the US. Their criminals are using fully-automatic machine pistols and assault rifles (the real things, not the completely made up "assault weapons" that anti-gunners invented as a straw-man). This caused the London police to announce last October that they would start arming many of their famously unarmed bobbies with submachine guns, because it's gotten so bad there.Well, if things have deteriorated so badly in countries with almost total gun bans, things must have really gone downhill here over the same time, right? After all, 20 years ago, only a handful of states allowed citizens to carry loaded guns in public for self-defense, and almost all of those had very strict regulations making it extremely difficult to qualify. But since then this situation has steadily changed, so that now every single state except Illinois allows citizens to do this, and the vast majority of them are "shall issue", meaning that if you pass a criminal background check and file the correct paperwork, you cannot be turned down for the license. Three states have gone even further, and require no license at all to carry, either openly or concealed, and several others are looking at doing the same. And gun ownership has also dramatically increased over the same period.So, are we drowning in a sea of violent crime? Well, no, we're not. Our overall violent crime rate is almost half that of those other two countries, and has steadily decreased over the last 20 years. Just over a month ago, the FBI announced that 2009 was once again lower than previous years, and 2010 is on track to be even lower still. We have violent crime rates that we haven't seen in this country since Eisenhower was president, despite there being more privately owned guns than there are private citizens, and a very large number of those being carried around loaded in public every day. Not only has violent crime overall dropped, but so has gun crime, and even gun accidents.If the obvious government statistics aren't good enough to convince you that gun control arguments are completely without any legitimate empirical support, why don't we ask the experts in scientific research what they have to say on the subject? Oh, wait, we don't have to, because they already told us just a few years ago. While the anti-gun idiots never like to bring it up, in 2004 two separate studies, one by the National Academy of Sciences, and another by the CDC, on the relationship between gun control and gun violence. They both showed that not a single study ever done on the subject presented legitimate data showing that gun control did any good at all. The National...
Noneof Yourbusiness
Mon Jul 12 2010 00:39
"Saying that allowing more people to own guns is a solution to gun violence is like saying that the solution to America’s obesity is to build more fast-food restaurants."And making such an ignorant statement shows you do not understand the issue at all. You, like so many anti-gun idiots seem determined to be purposely too obtuse to acknowledge that people can own guns without being criminals."Gun violence" isn't somehow magically different than over-all violence or other forms of violent crime. The guns don't cause it, criminals do. Increasing gun ownership does not increase criminal activity, and therefore does not increase violence of any kind, including gun violence. And all the empirical evidence bears this out. Chicago and DC, throughout the periods of their respective gun bans, had two of the highest murder and "gun violence" rates in the country, both of which increased, not decreased, after their bans were passed. Last year though, the first full year in DC without the ban in place, DC experienced the lowest murder rate it had seen in 30 years, despite all the BS hand-wringing over the "blood in the streets" that the anti-gun morons predicted.Compare the US violent crime stats with those of Great Britain and Australia. Both of those countries have over-all violent crime rates way above that of the US. Over the last 20 years, both countries have virtually banned private gun ownership. They are both also island nations with far better border protection to prevent smuggling than the US, and they both lack the constitutional controls on law enforcement that we have in this country, like legal bans on unwarranted searches and seizures, giving them far greater power to enforce bans than US law enforcement could ever have. And yet over that period both have seen massive increases in violent crime of all types, including gun crimes, those that such bans would most likely reduce if the concept of gun control was even remotely valid. Gun crime in the worst areas of Great Britain is up over 500%, and over 600% in Australia. Just last year in London, as was widely reported in their press (but not here, lest people see how miserably gun control is failing where it is applied), gun crime increased by 40% in JUST 6 MONTHS! And we're not talking about the cheap small low-powered handguns that are used in 95% of the gun crimes in the US. Their criminals are using fully-automatic machine pistols and assault rifles (the real things, not the completely made up "assault weapons" that anti-gunners invented as a straw-man). This caused the London police to announce last October that they would start arming many of their famously unarmed bobbies with submachine guns, because it's gotten so bad there.Well, if things have deteriorated so badly in countries with almost total gun bans, things must have really gone downhill here over the same time, right? After all, 20 years ago, only a handful of states allowed citizens to carry loaded guns in public for self-defense, and almost all of those had very strict regulations making it extremely difficult to qualify. But since then this situation has steadily changed, so that now every single state except Illinois allows citizens to do this, and the vast majority of them are "shall issue", meaning that if you pass a criminal background check and file the correct paperwork, you cannot be turned down for the license. Three states have gone even further, and require no license at all to carry, either openly or concealed, and several others are looking at doing the same. And gun ownership has also dramatically increased over the same period.So, are we drowning in a sea of violent crime? Well, no, we're not. Our overall violent crime rate is almost half that of those other two countries, and has steadily decreased over the last 20 years. Just over a month ago, the FBI announced that 2009 was once again lower than previous years, and 2010 is on track to be even lower still. We have violent crime rates that we haven't seen in this country since Eisenhower was president, despite there being more privately owned guns than there are private citizens, and a very large number of those being carried around loaded in public every day. Not only has violent crime overall dropped, but so has gun crime, and even gun accidents.If the obvious government statistics aren't good enough to convince you that gun control arguments are completely without any legitimate empirical support, why don't we ask the experts in scientific research what they have to say on the subject? Oh, wait, we don't have to, because they already told us just a few years ago. While the anti-gun idiots never like to bring it up, in 2004 two separate studies, one by the National Academy of Sciences, and another by the CDC, on the relationship between gun control and gun violence. They both showed that not a single study ever done on the subject presented legitimate data showing that gun control did any good at all. The National...
Jim
Mon Jul 12 2010 00:18
I don't think someone who isn't smart enough to use correct grammar should be lecturing the Supreme Court on how to interpret the Constitution.
Chris
Sun Jul 11 2010 22:50
All I needed to know about this author I learned from seeing his awful grammatical errors. "Inexplicitly"? Surely you meant inexplicably? Attain a gun? How about "Obtain a gun"? The author is an idiot and should be fired. If for not being able to comprehend the Constitution, then for his awful writing.
Anonymous
Sun Jul 11 2010 21:34
Any one who is in favor of infringing on the rights of American citizens is a shame to the country, and a traitor.
Anonymous
Sun Jul 11 2010 21:23
So you are _really_ ticked that the Supreme Court upheld the Constitution? In your worldview, is that _really_ something the Supreme Court isn't supposed to do?
Anonymous
Sun Jul 11 2010 21:09
Mr.liberal,please pass a law banning the intruder from owning a hand gun.Or have all buildings post a sign saying,no robbery or murders allowed here.That should solve the problem.
Michael
Sun Jul 11 2010 20:59
Dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb.
republic4u
Sun Jul 11 2010 18:47
You have got to be kidding me! So, shall we outlaw string and kitchen knives? At least if you outlaw them, there is no Constitutional protection to worry about.
Ken WIlkerson
Sun Jul 11 2010 18:22
"Saying that allowing more people to own guns is a solution to gun violence is like saying that the solution to America’s obesity is to build more fast-food restaurants."

That statement alone proves just how little you understand about journalism and about consittutional law.

First of all, to ALLOW citizens to own guns implies that gun ownership is a privelege, not a right, as laid out in the 2nd amendment.

Secondly, this argument is a non-sequitur. Where in the briefing to the supreme court was it argued that increasing gun ownership would decrease gun violence?

The only argument heard by the SCOTUS was that state and local governments do not have the authority to ban gun ownership-PERIOD!

Now, if you want to correllate gun ownership and gun violence, I suggest you compare violent crime stats for major US cities with and without gun bans, and/or prohibitive restrictions on gun ownership. You might come away with a new understanding of just how stupid this article is!

Anonymous
Sun Jul 11 2010 17:44
Why has violent crime dropped in DC since their gun ban was overthrown in 2008? Why have guns and ammo been flying off shelves since Obama got elected, yet 2009 had the lowest violent crime rate since 1963, in the biggest single-year drop since records have been kept?

This is madness. Criminals are going to have guns if they want them. Period. By definition, they do not obey laws. Only law abiding citizens will obey anti-gun laws, but these are also precisely the people who should not be worried about; they are law abiding citizens and won't be committing crimes anyway. Anti-gun laws only serve to make law abiding citizens vulnerable to criminals who do not obey the law and have a weapon anyway. To think otherwise is madness.

Gun owner in Florida !
Sun Jul 11 2010 17:15
Once again thank you for proving yet again what a joke this website is. Gun control, yea that works great. DC has been the murder capitol of the US how many times, london has a violent crime rate 7 times that of New York. Even though you cannot even own most firearms there.And chicago what a freaking joke that place is. They don't even want to provide info on their violent crime rate to the FBI because it clearly shows that their BS gun control does not work! I own Ak-47's and every glock made and screw anyone who has a problem with it. I only wish this website were toilet paper so I could wipe my ass with it!






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