When You Think About the Election, Think About Guns and the Supreme Court
PHILADELPHIA—Voters who are concerned about the control of guns should think carefully before voting for Sen. John McCain.
The presumptive GOP nominee for president has vowed to name Supreme Court justices in the mold of President Bush's two justices. They would be Chief Justice John G. Roberts and Associate Justice Samuel Alito. That's enough for me.
Both Roberts and Alito voted in favor in a 5-to-4 decision by the court to overturn a ban on handguns in the District of Columbia. The majority decision said it was lawful to possess guns in the home as protection. Once the decision was announced, the gun-happy National Rifle Association vowed to challenge other gun laws in state and local jurisdictions.
Here are three items from one story this past weekend in the Philadelphia Inquirer:
Item: A disgruntled former bookstore warehouse worker walked up and killed two employees outside the building. He was wearing a T-shirt that read: "Stupidity is not a crime."
Item: A 19-year-old driver was found guilty of third-degree murder in the slaying of a 14-year-old boy riding on a bike. The reason: The boy was not moving fast enough for the driver.
Item: Two men were charged with attempted murder for spraying bullets into a city street, wounding a 10-year-old girl. An investigating detective said: "It is not going to be tolerated in the city. It's a disgrace."
Well, it is a disgrace nationwide that these so-called self-protecting guns are not used for that purpose in the home but to turn our streets into a shooting gallery.
Earlier this week, the same newspaper reported that a pro-gun mole had made her way into an activist group working to control guns. You can bet she was letting the NRA know about what the group was doing.
The same Supreme Court majority in that D.C. gun case professes fidelity to states' rights. But it will not allow the nation's capital to set its own standards on guns.
Supreme Court appointments in the next few years will be important. Two liberals, Justices John Paul Stevens and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, are in the twilight of their careers.
In the voting booth in November, consider all of this.
Tags: Supreme Court | guns | presidential election 2008
Tools: 
Share
|
| Comments (26) | Print
Reader Comments
guns vs cars
guns in the wrong hands are deadly
cars in the wrong hands are deadly
society understands that having a gun is a constitutional right
society understands that having a car is not, nor is being granted a driver license
so, why is it that so many people are anti-gun and not anti-car??
the answer is that it is a prejudice, a bias, an illogical passion of a weak minded and fearful person, a position adopted by enemies of freedom, a position adopted by friends of tyranny
the end
Does anyone fear a total ban on private ownership???
Even though the Supreme Court in Heller stated that no government can impose a total ban on private firearms ownership-a decision endorsed by both McCain and Obama-why would any thinking American (even a gun owner) still fear virtual impossibily of a total gun ban? Strange and paranoid.
advertisement
John W. Mashek covered politics in Washington for four decades with U.S. News & World Report, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and the Boston Globe. His primary beats were Congress, the White House, and national politics. He covered every presidential election from 1960 to 1996. He was a panelist in three televised presidential debates in 1984, 1988, and 1992.