By Mr. Curmudgeon
Otis McDonald, 76, like President Barrack Obama before him, is a Chicago community organizer. He’s trying to rid his rough and tumble neighborhood of gangs and drug dealers. This has gotten him in trouble with the neighborhood’s hoods. “The people that want to control me,” said McDonald, “…these are the people I want to protect myself from.” That protection currently takes the form of a 20-gauge shotgun he keeps in his Morgan Park home. His attorneys filed suit against the City of Chicago over its heavy-handed blanket handgun ban. “This lawsuit, I hope, will allow me to bring my handgun into the city legally,” McDonald said. “I only want a handgun in my house for my protection.” The retired maintenance engineer’s plea got the attention of the U.S. Supreme Court. Last Wednesday, the high court decided to review McDonald’s suite and hear arguments on the issue this January. Most legal experts agree the court is likely to affirm that the Second Amendment is indeed a constitutional right.
The case has self-preservationists excited over the prospect that protecting themselves will be decriminalized. Thirty-three states attorneys general filed friend of the court amicus briefs supporting McDonald’s claim. A brief issued by Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott states:
The right to keep and bear arms under the Second Amendment is not just a ‘fundamental’ liberty interest. In the Anglo-American tradition, it is among the most fundamental of rights because it is essential to securing all our other liberties. The Founders well understood that, without the protections afforded by the Second Amendment, all of the other rights and privileges ordinarily enjoyed by Americans would be vulnerable to governmental acts of oppression.
“Government acts of oppression.” That seems to be the underlying problem big government advocates cannot get past. The assumption on their part is that government can do no wrong. Mistakes will be made, sure, but “oppression?” That’s impossible when all reasonable people go along with the government’s “hope and change” agenda. Like the gangs that “want to control” McDonald, big government fears those who won’t knuckle under to their intimidation. In their eyes, people like McDonald are nothing more than “right-wing terrorists” who are more frightening than al-Qaeda.
Whether at the local or national level, the unlikely but real threat posed to big government power by arms-bearing citizens ought to send chills up the collective spines of those who want total control over our lives. What they fail to understand is that’s precisely the Second Amendment’s function. Its purpose is to keep government constantly looking over its shoulder. The beauty of the Second Amendment is the articulate way it speaks truth to power.
