Why Overturning the Chicago Gun Ban is Bad

Many Americans rightly cried "foul" when the city of Chicago imposed an outright ban on all handguns.  After all, this ban is not only a violation of individual freedom, but also the individual God-given right of self defense.  Many Second Amendment advocates cheered loudly when it looked like the Supreme Court might overturn the ban.  However, this is not something that they really should have been cheering for.

Now, those of you who know me might be saying "wait a minute, Brian!  How can you own firearms, love to shoot, and believe in a God-given right of self defense and be against a Supreme Court decision overturning a city-imposed handgun ban?"  Let me explain my position here a bit.

The issue here is a lot more complex than most people realize.  On the surface, it looks like what the Supreme Court is doing is affirming the right to keep and bear arms as protected by the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution.  However, you need to dig a little deeper to find the true implications of this decision.

The Chicago gun ban is Constitutional when you consider the Ninth and Tenth Amendments.  For a refresher, the Ninth Amendment protects the rights of the People that are not specifically protected in the Constitution, and the Tenth says that powers not delegated to the federal government are retained by the States or the People.  Therefore, the Second Amendment should not apply to the Chicago gun ban because the federal government is not involved.

However, if you read the Constitution a little bit further, you get to the Fourteenth Amendment.  The Fourteenth Amendment's "due process" clause gave rise to the Incorporation Doctrine.  The intent at the time was to protect the rights of former slaves after the War of Northern Aggression.  According to quite a few Supreme Court cases, this turned the Bill of Rights into a list of rights, rather than a protection of rights.

If the Supreme Court rules in McDonald vs. Chicago that the Second Amendment is incorporated to the states through the Fourteenth, then they will be once again ruling that federal law trumps state law.  What is a minor victory for gun rights is a major defeat for limited government.

The intent of the founding fathers was to limit the federal government's influence on the states.  The Bill of Rights was meant to limit what the federal government could do and leave the rest to the states and the People.  By using the incorporation doctrine, the Supreme Court is effectively ignoring the Ninth and Tenth Amendments in order to centralize government.  

It is rather ironic that conservatives generally support States' Rights until they must be set aside to further something like gun rights.  This is another reason why I see no real difference between the Democrats and the Republicans.

If we didn't have the Fourteenth Amendment, federal firearms laws would be rightfully declared unconstitutional under the Second Amendment.  City and State level gun bans like the one in Chicago would be constitutional under the Ninth and Tenth Amendments.  This is what the intent of the founding fathers was.

Unfortunately, people will throw out the idea of limiting the influence of the federal government in order to further their own agenda even while preaching that they want a limited government.  Hypocrites.