It Is Dangerous to Be Right When the Government Is Wrong - Andrew P. Napolitano [82]
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A similar case occurred at the University of Texas at Austin on August 1st 1966. Charles Whitman, a student at UT, ascended the tower on campus to use as a sniper’s perch. Once there, he engaged in a shooting spree, killing fourteen people. Shortly after he initiated the attack, both police and armed civilians—including an English professor armed with a deer rifle—started to return fire. Officer Ramiro Martinez later reflected that it was owing to these armed civilians that the body count wasn’t even higher; without them, Whitman would have been able to take aim freely at whomever he wished. We should be honoring—not incapacitating—these heroic civilians for exercising their natural rights in order to prevent further bloodshed.
The lack of media coverage on the advantages of guns on campus feeds into the ignorance of Americans with regard to firearms in government-owned schools. Just fifteen years ago, many states allowed concealed-handgun permit holders to carry guns on school property, and there were no major incidents. Yet, with the passage of the Federal Safe School Zone Act, these states no longer allow schools to permit concealed handguns. Fortunately, some states (New Hampshire, Oregon, and Utah), in defiance of the federal law, have taken the lead in restoring our natural right to bear arms and now allow permit holders to carry guns at school.
The Supreme Court Restores Gun Rights
While you must remain eternally vigilant to protect your natural right to keep and bear arms, the Supreme Court recently began to do the work for you. Almost seventy years after the Supreme Court permitted the feds to restrict Second Amendment rights in the Miller case, it decided what is now lauded as a “landmark” decision. The Supreme Court in District of Columbia v. Heller (2008) held the Second Amendment protects an individual’s right to bear arms in the home. In so doing, Justice Scalia in his majority opinion referred to the right to bear arms as a “fundamental right.” By enshrining the right as fundamental, the Court acknowledged the right is natural, and thus cannot be stripped by any government, federal, state, or local, without due process. However, the Court failed to go far enough in this case. The majority did not address the language “shall not be infringed.” In fact, the Court listed a number of infringements it deemed acceptable. By doing so, the Court ignored the plain language of the Second Amendment and the Founders’ original intent. The Founders did not write “should not be infringed,” which would give government leeway in creating restrictions; no, they wrote “shall not,” which means the government must not infringe on your right to bear arms.
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Unfortunately, mayors such as Mayor Richard M. Daley of Chicago ignored Heller and kept their gun control laws in place. This resulted in the Supreme Court agreeing to hear the case of McDonald v. The City of Chicago (2010). The named plaintiff, Otis McDonald, was a seventy-six-year-old African American residing in Chicago. McDonald had lived in his neighborhood since the 1970s, and over time, the neighborhood became overrun with gangs and drug dealers. In fact, McDonald received threats on the street, and his home was broken into numerous times.21 While McDonald felt it was his natural right to protect his family and his home from the neighborhood’s increasing violence, Chicago’s 1982 gun control law prevented him from doing so. It effectively banned possession of handguns by all persons living in Chicago, except certain employees of the government. Some argued McDonald could still legally own a shotgun in his home, but what use is a shotgun to a seventy-six-year-old man? As McDonald pointed out, “Yes, I own long guns . . . but how long do you think it will take me to get up, get out of bed, and get my hands on a shotgun if someone is breaking in through the bedroom window?”22
Fortunately, for McDonald and the rest of this nation, the Supreme Court woke up and applied the Second Amendment to the states. Justice Alito,