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by Joan Biskupic
USA Today

WASHINGTON — In 2008, when national gun rights advocates were looking for residents to challenge Chicago’s ban on handguns, Otis McDonald was in effect looking for them. McDonald, 76, says he had seen his neighborhood on the far South Side of Chicago turn from bad to worse over the years with "gangbangers and drug dealers."

"My wife and I are here alone all the time now," says McDonald, a retired maintenance engineer, who with his wife, Laura, reared three children. "I’ve got burglar alarms hooked into the police department. I have a shotgun, but a handgun (would be) more handy for me to handle."

McDonald had driven down to Springfield, Ill., a few years earlier for an Illinois State Rifle Association rally, to support the push for looser gun laws in Chicago. It was the beginning of a bond with gun rights activists that led to McDonald v. City of Chicago, a dispute that will be argued before the Supreme Court on Tuesday and could reshape firearms regulations nationwide.

The case marks the second round of high-stakes litigation over the breadth of the Second Amendment — and will likely have wider impact nationwide than the first. In June 2008, the justices struck down a Washington, D.C., handgun ban and declared for the first time that the Second Amendment covers an individual right to keep and bear arms.

The new question is whether the 2008 decision also applies to cities and states, or only to laws in the federal government and its enclaves, such as Washington. It sets up another major constitutional question with ramifications for scores of mostly urban gun regulations.

Chicago defends the 1982 law that stops McDonald and other residents from keeping handguns in their homes, arguing that firearms violence is so serious that the court should not extend the 2008 landmark ruling to states.

Benna Ruth Solomon, the city attorney taking the lead on the new case, says in her brief that states and cities should be able to decide for their own jurisdictions how to reduce crime and also prevent accidental injuries caused by firearms.

The Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, the International Association of Chiefs of Police and two other police groups have joined in a "friend of the court" brief cautioning the justices about how their decision could affect gun regulations nationwide.

"Courts already have been grappling with over 190 Second Amendment challenges brought against firearms laws and prosecutions in the year and a half since" the justices’ ruling in District of Columbia v. Heller, the groups say in their brief.

They say lawsuits have targeted, among other regulations, those barring loaded guns on public streets and the possession of guns on government property.

The court said the Second Amendment protects an individual’s right to keep guns in the home for self-defense but did not preclude other long-standing laws, such as those that ban felons from having firearms.

The overriding question in the Chicago case: Does the Second Amendment grant a fundamental right comparable to, say, the First Amendment’s guarantee of free speech and the Fourth Amendment’s shield against unreasonable searches and seizures? Or, is the Second Amendment in a class of its own because it involves a right to possess a weapon designed to kill or cause injury?

McDonald’s lawyers, backed by 38 states, argue the Second Amendment should protect people against city and state regulation because the right to bear arms is "fundamental to the American scheme of justice."

The Chicago School Board, backing the city, counters: "We tolerate few restrictions on the right to free speech because of its salutary effects, and because ’sticks and stones may break my bones but words can never hurt me,’ as the children’s rhyme goes. Guns, on the other hand, will kill you."

’I am doing this for me’

The case against Chicago’s handgun law began while the groundbreaking District of Columbia v. Heller was in the works. Virginia lawyer Alan Gura, who took the lead on the 2008 case, was looking for residents to challenge the Chicago law and offer a broader test of the Second Amendment.

"I said the Lord is hearing my prayer," recalls McDonald of meeting Gura and other gun rights lawyers in early 2008. "They never pressed me. I’m not doing this for them. I am doing this for me."

McDonald had been trying for years to protect himself and other seniors in the deteriorating neighborhood. Read more...