Just to whack the beehive...

Here is a letter I sent to the paper:

In the wake of the tragic shooting deaths of Chicago children resulting from gang crossfire, letters from gun control advocates and opponents flowed into the paper. The debate seemed to miss one basic and unalterable legal fact, however. Left unsaid or misstated was the fact that this is a political and a policy debate, it is not a federal constitutional one. Within the jurisdictional bounds of the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, it is settled law that no individual right to gun ownership is protected by the 2nd Amendment and that there is no such "fundamental" right protected by the 14th Amendment. While that may change as precedents are revisited, the law on this question is clear.

The historical origins of the 2nd Amendment are far from conclusive on this question. Firearms in a pre-Industrial Revolution America were made by hand and were quite expensive. For example, individual rights advocates fondly quote Patrick Henry with well-placed ellipses, as he states "the great object is that every man be armed...every one who is able may have a gun." Unfortunately, the excised portion reveals that Henry is referring to the STATE purchasing weapons for militia use: "The great object is that every man be armed.--but can the people to afford to pay for double sets of arms? Every one who is able may have a gun. But have we not learned by experience, that necessary as it is to have arms, and though our assembly has, by a succession of laws for many years, endeavored to have the militia completely armed, it is still far from being the case. When this power is given up to Congress without limitation or bounds, how will your militia be armed?"

The description of the "Magazine" at colonial Williamsburg states that "The night of April 20, 1775, Lieutenant Henry Collins stole toward the capital with a squad of royal marines from the H.M.S. Magdalen anchored in Burwell's Bay on the James River. Their orders, straight from Governor Dunmore, were to empty the arsenal and disable THE MUSKETS stored there. In 1715, the magazine "safeguarded shot, powder, flints, tents, tools, swords, pikes, canteens, cooking utensils, and as many as 3,000 Brown Bess flintlocks--equipment needed for defense against Indians, slave revolts, local riots, and pirate raids."

But the historical discussion is little more than an amusing diversion, because we have the reality of the law. The 7th Circuit, in a 1999 case left undisturbed by a subsequent decision in 2003, stated that "Whatever questions remain unanswered, [the 1939 Supreme Court decision in U.S. v.] Miller and its progeny do confirm that the Second Amendment establishes no right to possess a firearm apart from the role possession of the gun might play in maintaining a state militia." The Morton Grove case, which allowed a local ban to stand, remains good law on the 14th Amendment status of firearm ownership not being a fundamental right.

So the question remains where it should--in the legislative bodies of America, both state and federal. Make your case one way or another, but please, leave the 2nd Amendment out of it.