Supporting gun ownership and sportsmen's rights in response to the flurry of anti-gun and sport legislation under consideration in Congress and the Illinois State Legislature.
(If you would like to include your organization or events on our calendar, please contact us and we'll accommodate you)
As Chairman of the Law & Justice Committee of the McHenry County Board, Nick Provenzano has led the fight in
support of the 2nd Amendment and gun owner’s rights. His recent leadership to introduce the Pro 2nd Amendment
Resolution led to a unanimous vote of support by all 24 county board members of our gun owners rights. Nick’s
leadership came at a difficult time in Northern Illinois and came prior to the Supreme Court ruling upholding 2nd
Amendment rights to individual citizens. Nick stood up to Chicago politicians and the Governor at a time when it wasn’t
politically correct.
Now Nick needs our help as he faces an Anti-gun Democrat challenger for his County Board seat in the fall election. This
opponent will surely use Nick’s defense of 2nd Amendment Rights as a tool to rally the Anti-gun radicals to defeat Nick in November. We can’t let that happen and now is our time to come together to help Nick’s campaign.
Please join with the Sportsman’s Association at a fundraising dinner on Nick’s behalf on September 18.
$30 per person Dinner & Cash Bar
McHenry VFW Post 4600
3002 W. Rte. 120 McHenry, IL
Details on this PDF.
Juliet A. Leftwich (insert your best pun about "The Left" here...) argues that the Supreme Court got it wrong on Heller. Interesting idea that her and her friends at the Legal Community Against Violence know better than the Supreme Court... The article is here, and if you read it you can read some of our corrections to her flawed logic.
Christmas came early for the NRA this year.
What is interesting is that it wasn't the NRA that bought Heller before the Court... No, it was Robert Levy of the Cato Institute. The NRA had little to do with it in the beginning.
The court did just what the gun lobby wanted - it disregarded long-standing judicial precedent (including a 1939 Supreme Court decision holding that the Second Amendment confers a right to bear arms only in the context of a well regulated state militia)...
Let's explore that "1939 Supreme Court Decision" that she conveniently sweeps under the rug for a moment: Leftwich is alluding to the Miller case and what she ignores is the fact that the Miller case stated that people, who are considered part of the "unorganized militia", should have access to Military small arms. Miller was arrested for transporting a short-barreled shotgun across a state line while running moonshine. Miller, being a bootlegger and gin-runner, didn't want to appear before the court for possessing a sawed-off shotgun. If he had, his legal team probably could've argued that since sawed off shotguns were used in WWI and overturned the "Short-Barreled Shotgun" clause in the 1934 NFA Act. Either way, since he was a no-show, they kept the NFA "Short-Barreled Shotgun" clause on the books.
Further, since all able bodied people between 18-45 are considered part of the "unorganized militia", then it makes sense that the bulk of the population would have legal access to military small arms.
The court also found that laws imposing conditions on the commercial sale of firearms and banning dangerous and unusual weapons, such as M-16 rifles used by the military, would pass muster.
The civilian version of the M-16, the AR platform, is now the most popular semi-automatic rifle platform by sales figures. Calling the most common, most popular, most widespread platform "unusual" is just wrong. Further, the truth is that all firearms must be considered dangerous and handled accordingly. The idea that putting a simple folding stock on a firearm makes it somehow more dangerous is like arguing that "infinity plus one" is somehow more than infinity...
I refer everyone to this 1989 video talking about "Assault Weapons":
...is that Heller leaves the door open to a variety of gun laws. The bad news, however, is that the opinion provides no guidance whatsoever to lower courts regarding the standards they should use to review those laws.
Instead, the decision creates uncertainty where none existed before, inviting the gun lobby to file lawsuits and forcing litigants to battle it out in the courts on a haphazard, case-by-case basis. The first salvos in that battle were fired immediately after the Heller decision was issued, when the gun lobby sued San Francisco, Chicago and other Illinois cities that ban handgun possession (the San Francisco prohibition applies only to public housing).
But that is the point. Since the door is open, we have to establish the new case law, consistent with the Courts Ruling - the Chicago, New York and San Francisco cases will be what establish those legal precidents! Most legal analysts say that those have a excellent chances of winning.
Although the Heller case has changed the legal landscape surrounding gun regulation, it has not changed the realities surrounding gun violence in our nation. It has not changed the fact that more than 30,000 Americans die each year from firearm-related homicides, suicides and accidental shootings - an average of 80 gun deaths each day.
Sorry, but this line of flawed reasoning is spouted so often that it people thought it was true! Why is it that the cities with the prohibitions on handguns - DC, Chicago, New York - had the highest handgun homicide rates?
Posted 01:53PM Jul 07, 2008 by MCSA
