Mcdonald's Second Amendment

Otis McDonald, a Chicago resident, sought to acquire a handgun for personal defense. However, the latter was not possible due to laws imposed by the city of Chicago requiring registration for every handgun, also the city refused to grant any new permits for almost twenty-nine years. The Chicago petitioner, McDonald, argues that the handgun ban has left him vulnerable to criminals. The Chicago Police Department statistics, reveal that “the City's handgun murder rate has actually increased since the ban was enacted and that Chicago residents now face one of the highest murder rates in the country and rates of other violent crimes that exceed the average in comparable cities.” Comprehending the history, major issues , majority opinions dissents

, and impacts of McDonald v. Chicago are vital in forming an educated opinion on whether or not U.S. citizens should be allowed to carry and conceal weapons.
The 2008 Supreme Court case Heller v. District of Columbia found that Washington D.C. gun control laws that restrain the tenancy of firearms infringed an individual’s Second Amendment right to self-defense. Suitor, Otis McDonald challenged the constitutionality of gun control laws in Chicago, disputing that they are congruent with Heller’s. After Heller, the federal government cannot forbid the tenancy of firearms in the household. This case makes us ponder if the same restraint applies to state governments. The Fourteenth Amendment provides, among other things, that a State may not abridge “the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States” or deprive “any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” Justice Alito wrote: “It is clear that the Framers and ratifiers of the Fourteenth Amendment counted the right to keep and bear arms among those fundamental rights necessary to our system of ordered liberty.” McDonald disputes that the Right to Keep and bear arms is an essential right that states should not be able to repress. Chicago disputes that states should be able to regulate firearms according to local conditions. A City ordinance provides that “no person shall … possess … any firearm unless such person is the holder of a valid registration certificate for such firearm.” Chicago, Ill., Municipal Code §8–20–040(a) (2009) The outcome of this case will affect the ability of states to regulate the possession of handguns in their jurisdictions and could have far-reaching effects on long-held conceptions of federalism. The Supreme Court found that the second amendment right admitted in Heller was fully applicable to the states. The court found that the Second Amendment does protect the rights of individual citizens.
After the court found the firearm ban in the city of Chicago to be unconstitutional, a number of problems arose. Gun control laws locally and other states were put on jeopardy after the McDonald decision. In Justice John Paul Stevens’ dissenting opinion he warned that the McDonald decision “invites an avalanche of litigation that could mire the federal courts in fine-grained determinations about which state and local regulations comport with the Heller right — the precise contours of which are far from pellucid — under a standard of review we have not even established.” Justice John Paul is certainly right, the McDonald ruling could have potentially caused a ripple effect in which suitors would uphold the Heller right. Expert, from the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence senior attorney Daniel Vice stated: “Chicago is the only place in the nation with such restrictive gun bans.” Analyzing what Mr. Vice states, means that potentially the threat of laws being changed and overturned based on the Heller right is present, however since Chicago is the only city with such harsh restrictions, issues might not present themselves.

The Court’s decision was a 5/4 margin and found that the 2nd Amendment protects an individual right to bear handguns for legal uses, suchlike self-defense, at home. Subsequently, it battered down unconstitutional provisions of a Washington D.C. law that (1) effectively restricted tenancy of firearms by civilians and (2) required legally owned handguns to be maintained unloaded or sealed away when not located at a business place or being used for legal recreational activities. “The requirement that any firearm in a home be unloaded or locked made it impossible for citizens to use arms for the sole intent to lawfully defend themselves. The 2nd Amendment right to keep and bear firearms is not complete and a wide spectrum of gun control laws endure “presumptively lawful,” according to the Court. “These include laws that (1) prohibit carrying concealed weapons, (2) prohibit gun possession by felons or the mentally ill, (3) prohibit carrying firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, (4) impose “conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms,” (5) prohibit “dangerous and unusual weapons,” and (6) regulate firearm storage to prevent accidents.”(2010.0LR Research Report) Justice Scalia wrote the majority opinion. Justices Alito, Kennedy, Roberts, and Thomas also joined him.

Justices Stevens and Breyer, presented separate dissenting opinions.

Stevens argues that the Second Amendment protects the individual right to bear arms only in the context of military service and (2) does not limit government's authority to regulate civilian use or possession of firearms. (2010.OLR Research Report) In his dissent, Breyer mentioned that “even if the 2nd Amendment, in addition to militia-related purposes, protects an individual's right of self-defense, that assumption should be the beginning of the constitutional inquiry, not the end. Breyer contended that there are no purely logical or conceptual ways to determine the constitutionality of gun control laws, such as the District's law.”(2010.OLR Research Report) He also argued that “taking into account the extensive evidence of gun crime and gun violence in urban areas, the District;s gun law would be constitutionally permissible.”(2010.OLR Research

Report)
The law center foresees high level of litigation due to the courts founding, although in most states it is not illegal to carry concealed weapons and to have at-home weapons.

The gun lobby might threated with suing in order to prevent the state governments from pursuing future bans on firearms and handguns due to high criminality. “Policymakers should rest assured, however, that nothing in the McDonald decision prevents them from adopting many types of reasonable laws to reduce gun violence.”(2010.Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence) Also in March 2010, “a federal district court rejected a Second Amendment challenge to many of those laws, including a ban on assault weapons and high capacity ammunition magazines, a one-handgun-a-month law, and a law requiring the reporting of lost or stolen firearms, demonstrating that many strong gun laws remain consistent with the Second Amendment.”(2010. Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence) . The threat of litigation upholding the Heller Right is present, but laws dealing with gun control in every other state are so much different than those of Chicago, giving ample room to bear and keep

arms.

It is necessary to adjust the law according to peoples needs. Such as Mr.McDonalds need for self-defense. If the state is not able to provide a law-abiding citizen with safety , he ought to pursue it himself.