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Discussing the Diaspora as seen through an internal Black lens
Strike A Big One For the 2nd Amendment - The Supreme Court Affirms Gun Rights
June 26th, 2008
The Court affirmed American’s right to self-defense; visa via in particular the individual right to own hand guns. This ruling was in regard to Washington D.C.’s 32 year hand gun ban.
Absolutely! Now we just need them to overturn laws making it criminal to wear a bullet proof vest. what the hell right does the government have to tell you that your not allowed to wear something protective over your own body? They force you to wear seat belts and motorcycle helmets for “your protection” under penalty; but then tell you what you can’t wear on your person to protect yourself from harm.
While affirming the personal right to hand gun ownership in the home, the court also rightly ruled, as written at Theage.com that the individual right to possess a gun “for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defence within the home” was not unlimited. “It is not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose,” Justice Scalia wrote; hence laying the ground work to keep the general body of gun control laws intact.
There is a clear issue here that gun control zealots always ignore. If you take guns out of the hands of law abiding citizens, all you’re doing is disarming them from protecting themselves against the criminals because the criminals aren’t going to give up their guns. They’re not going to give up their guns when you pass a law, because criminals don’t follow the law - THAT’S WHAT MAKES THEM CRIMINALS.
This needs to be said again; criminals don’t follow the law!
Case in point, D.C. Thirty-year hand gun ban and people get murdered and shot down there regularly, still.
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Boston.com reports last year that:
Over the years, gun violence has continued to plague the city, reaching staggering levels at times….
When they imposed the ban in 1976, then-Mayor Walter E. Washington, a Democrat, and the council were reacting to public concern about crime, which began rising across the country in the mid-1960s.
more stories like this
The ban aroused anger on Capitol Hill. And in a different year, Congress might have scuttled the law, as it was empowered to do. But with a presidential election just a few months away, members were reluctant to debate gun control.
The law required all existing handguns, rifles, and shotguns in the District to be re-registered, then kept disassembled or with triggers locked.
In 1977, the first full year of the ban, the city recorded 192 homicides. The total rose to 223 in 1981, then fell to 147 in 1985 - the lowest annual homicide toll in the District since 1966. At the time, the rate for the country also was trending down.
Which turned out to be the calm before the slaughter.
The advent of the crack market and the unprecedented street violence it unleashed nationwide sent homicide rates soaring in the latter half of the 1980s. Not only did the number of killings surge in the District, the homicide rates here also far exceeded the rates in crack-ridden cities where handguns had not been banned.
In the peak year, 1991, the District reported 482 homicides.
Almost as sharply as violence in the District increased, it declined through the 1990s, a drop researchers attributed to the burning out and aging of a generation of crack dealers and users. Again, the shift reflected national trends.
Yet the gun culture on the city’s mean streets during the crack epidemic has not abated, police statistics show. Even as the homicide toll declined in D.C. after 1991, the percentage of killings committed with firearms remained far higher than it was when the ban was passed.
Guns were used in 63 percent of the city’s 188 slayings in 1976. Last year, out of 169 homicides, 81 percent were shootings.
Meanwhile, periodic ATF reports have documented that firearms, flowing in from elsewhere in the country, remain available on D.C. streets - exactly what the ban was designed to prevent.
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5 Responses to “Strike A Big One For the 2nd Amendment - The Supreme Court Affirms Gun Rights”
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Yobachi Boswell is creator and publisher of BlackPerspecitve.net. I’m a writer, activist and political watcher based in Nashville, Tennessee. I’ve also been know to do some spoken word and MCing in my day.
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I have to disagree about the body armor…I think it’s largely unneccessary for non-military citizens to use body armor when even our military doesn’t get body armor. Why would the common citizen need body armor–he shouldn’t be walking into firefights in the first place.
I actually disagree with the seatbelt laws as well…there should be laws on making sure your children have the proper protection, yes, but if you’re too stupid to protect yourself, you shouldn’t be required to.
The average citizen doesn’t need body amour; but if an individual happens to need or just wants to wear it because it’s their body, they shouldn’t be harassed and punished by the government for it.
But their are instances when normal people would need it. For example, what if someone is threatening your life. Say you had a violent boyfriend who’d already threatened you with a gun. If you want to wear it, then that should be your business.
And the military not having the body-amour is a travesty of an administration and a country that doesn’t care half as much about it’s troops as they claim.
And I agree with you about children and seatbelt, they’re not capable of making their own decision; but as for everyone else…
That’s very true. At the very least, we should be doing background checks on the people we sell guns and body armor to–selling body armor to someone with a violent criminal record, for example, should never happen. And the criminal check should happen /before/ anything is sold.
People are not taking personal responsibility for their own selves. Look at all the warning labels on every product you buy - my favorite is the warning on a clothes iron - never iron clothes while they are being worn. Regarding body armor - there’s a recent story about the Chinese supplying the Iraqi insurgents with body armor which is far superior to what our troops have. In regards to the gun control law - you might want to read this piece - www.constitution.org/mil/rkba1982.htm.
I didn’t comment on the seat belt law as it has been covered above.