Supreme Court Rules on Second Amendment

“I’m glad the Supreme Court ruled to let us keep our guns.”

That was a comment from a friend and online reader of this column, regarding the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in the case McDonald v. Chicago.

I responded to him that I didn’t think the ruling had much to do with us and our shotguns.

Nevertheless, some people are cheering the Supreme Court decision, while others are trying to find some reason to think that there may still be some room for some common sense restrictions on firearms, particularly handguns.

The Chicago case is a follow-up to an earlier case, District of Columbia v. Heller, in which the Court ruled, in 2008, that the Second Amendment secures for individuals the right to keep and bear arms, including handguns, for the purpose of self-defense. The ruling nullified D.C. laws that made possession of unregistered firearms a crime, and made registration of handguns illegal. A key point in that case is that the District of Columbia is under Federal jurisdiction.

The day after the Heller decision, petitioners, including one Otis McDonald, filed suit in Federal court challenging Chicago (and the suburb of Oak Park) handgun laws similar to the D.C. laws struck down in the Heller decision. The key contention in the suit is that the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms should apply to states through the due process clause of the 14th Amendment.

The Federal District Court (Northern District of Illinois) and Appeals Court ruled against McDonald on the basis that in previous cases the Supreme Court had not incorporated the Second Amendment against the states, and the question of whether the 14th Amendment applied was an issue that could be decided only by the Supreme Court.

The crux of the McDonald case revolves around balances of state and federal power and whether state and local governments can enact laws to address crime problems in large urban areas.

The Court ruled, last week, in an opinion by Justice Alito, that the 14th Amendment’s Due Process Clause incorporates the Second Amendment rights recognized in the Heller case. Justice Thomas wrote a separate opinion coming to the same conclusion under another provision of the 14th Amendment.

While the Court’s decision affirmed the Second Amendment’s right for individuals to keep and bear arms, the decision did not directly strike down the Chicago laws. Instead, it remanded the case back to the Seventh Circuit to resolve conflicts between certain Chicago gun restrictions and the Second Amendment.

While the McDonald decision affirmed individual Second Amendment rights, it did little to resolve issues as to what local jurisdictions can do to address the problems of gun violence. The opinion affirmed that certain firearms restrictions mentioned in the Heller case, such as those prohibiting possession of firearms by felons or mentally ill persons, or laws forbidding carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms, are all permissible.

Further, the Chicago Tribune reported that the City of Chicago’s top attorney, Mara Georges, believes that the McDonald ruling doesn’t mean that the City can’t restrict the number of handguns kept in the home, or keep a current ban on firearms dealers within Chicago’s city limits. The City plans to draft new regulations to require registration of handguns, plus require gun owners to undergo training and submit to a criminal background check and obtain liability insurance.

Andrew Cohen, a legal analyst for Politics Daily, comments, “The ruling all but assures a great deal of litigation over the scope of the McDonald ruling. We will now see a wave of lawsuits by gun rights advocates seeking to invalidate gun control measures across the country…At the same time, state lawmakers …are likely to struggle” over questions of whether restrictions fall under the scope of the Second Amendment or longstanding regulatory measures that Justice Alito expressly endorsed.

In summary, the court decisions did, in fact, affirm individual rights to keep and bear arms, but it still allows state and local governments to put in some regulations.

The bottom line is that we will continue to argue and litigate.

BP Oil Spill - the Montana Connection

While traveling across Montana this June, a common sight was of Montana rivers rushing towards the Missouri River, and on to the Gulf of Mexico. With the heavy rains of June, these rivers have been carrying a big load of sediment.

At the same time, coastal Louisiana, an area much in the news these days, keeps shrinking. Every 38 minutes an area the size of a football field disappears, washed away by waves and tides of the Gulf of Mexico.

And, at the same time, a million gallons of crude oil surges out of that BP deep-water oil well every day, the ongoing disaster story that dominates the news media.

Now, let’s connect the dots.

At one time, the sediment from the Jefferson, Madison and Gallatin Rivers here in southwest Montana, along with the Marias, Milk, Yellowstone, Musselshell, Judith, Tongue and Powder Rivers, to name just a few, emptied into the Missouri River, starting a long journey to the Gulf of Mexico. Naturally, much of that sediment settled out along the way, forming sand bars, islands, replenishing riparian areas, but eventually washing downstream to the Mississippi River system and finally settling out on the coast of Louisiana, forming islands and wetlands.

That sediment doesn’t go far anymore. Most sediment on the main stem of the Missouri settles out in the string of dams on the upper Missouri. The sediment from the Yellowstone system settles out as the river merges with the Missouri at the Montana/North Dakota border and the next great impoundment, Lake Sakakawea.

Now, consider all the rivers of America’s heartland that used to dump sediment loads into the Mississippi which are now dammed and otherwise harnessed in the name of progress, whether that means hydroelectric generation, flood control, or irrigation.

The sediment that does get carried to the Mississippi gets rushed along by levees, dikes, and shipping channels. Much of that sediment, which previously spread out in a great river delta, forming and replenishing islands and wetlands, now ends up in deep water areas of the Gulf of Mexico.

As a result of all that progress, the coastal wetlands of Louisiana have lost much of their vitality and are prone to erosion, a situation dramatically demonstrated several years ago when Hurricanes Katrina and Rita battered the coast, and some islands and whole communities were literally washed away.

None of this is new. It’s a process that has been going on since the 1930s. It’s estimated that 2,300 square miles of coastal Louisiana marshlands have disappeared since then.

And now we have the BP oil well disaster.

If that oil well were centered in Butte, the contaminated area would extend west to the Clearwater National Forest in Idaho. To the south, it would extend to near Idaho Falls. To the north and east the spill would cover Great Falls, Lewistown, Bozeman and Big Timber.

From daily news reports, it seems increasingly clear that the BP corporate culture isn’t necessarily safety first. In addition, other observers have noted that other countries with offshore oil resources have more stringent environmental protections, including requiring that well drillers put down a relief well at the same time they establish a primary oil well. BP is currently trying to put a relief well in place, but it likely won’t be complete until August. Meanwhile, the well keeps gushing out a million gallons of oil a day, only a small part of which is recovered.

The loss of coastal wetlands and barrier islands means more oil is headed for the mainland, and oil damage to existing wetlands further weakens the already fragile system.

It’s only going to get worse. Tony Dolle, the Communications Director for Ducks Unlimited, who has spent most of the last two months in Louisiana as part of a DU task force, asks, “How are we going to tell 13 million ducks and geese they’d be better off not coming to Louisiana this winter?”

Like an old Cecil B. DeMille movie epic, the Gulf oil disaster has a cast of thousands and is years in the making.

On the web: www.ifitwasmyhome.com, www.du.org, www.vanishingparadise.org.