My Blog

I have had conflicting feelings over the Supreme Court’s decision that the hand gun ban in Washington D.C. is unconstitutional.

Unless I’ve misheard the local news, there are deaths or injuries due to gun violence, in a city which has the ban, just about every day.

Therefore, is this decision even relevant? The Mayor of Chicago thinks so.

"Does this lead to everyone having a gun in our society?" Daley asked while speaking at a Navy Pier event. "If [the justices] think that’s the answer, then they’re greatly mistaken. Then why don’t we do away with the court system and go back to the Old West, you have a gun and I have a gun and we’ll settle it in the streets?"(Daley Vows to Fight for Chicago’s Gun Ban)

The new Chicago police superintendent was also angry about the ruling:

"From a law enforcement perspective, this will no doubt make a police officer’s job more challenging than it already is, particularly since a firearm is used in 75 percent of all murders committed in the city of Chicago."  (Daley Vows to Fight for Chicago’s Gun Ban)

And the above quote is exactly why this decision is not tugging violently at my liberal heart strings. There simply is not clear cut evidence that the gun ban has reduced violent crime. If someone wants to kill someone else, or if someone feels he needs a gun for protection, he will acquire one, no matter the ban.

The Chicago Police Department seized more than 13,000 guns last year, but only a handful of people were arrested for violating the city’s handgun ban, records show. Chicago Police spokeswoman Monique Bond said 74 people were arrested in 2007 and 83 people in 2006 for failing to register their handguns, an ordinance violation. "Criminals will continue to carry guns, and law-abiding citizens will continue to keep them in their homes for self-defense," one commander said. (Cops: Few arrested for violating ban)

Still I can’t help but think that it’s a bad idea for every person in the city to have the ability to go out and buy a handgun for their personal use.

My concern has nothing to do with social justice. Hand gun violence affects the poor no matter if guns are banned or not.  In fact, I am very Republican about this issue. I fear that lifting the gun ban will affect my own personal safety.

The practical concern with this ruling is will an improbable lift of the ban lead to a proliferation of hand guns throughout the city of Chicago and cause my life to be at risk?  For example, when I cut someone off, and if he has road rage, is he going to shoot me, whereas before he might just have run me off the road? Or will my neighbor, who I’ve heard fight with his boyfriend, one day in a drunken rage shoot his lover with the gun he just purchased at the local gun shop, the bullet ricocheting somehow into my bedroom leading to my ultimate demise. If a Republican wins the next election, will the people in the high rise across the street shoot guns out their windows, and will a bullet slip through my open window leading to my paralysis?

The majority opinion argued that the right to own arms is based on the principle of self defense as provided by the Second Amendment. Assuming I would buy a gun, how would that help if someone shoots at me intentionally or unintentionally? Perhaps I should invest in my own type of missile defense system that I remember hearing about when the President of my childhood, Ronald Reagan led this country during the Cold War.

When the Second Amendment was written, were there high rises and urban crowding? Was there road rage? Were there even hand guns?

Chicago’s gun ban probably isn’t solving the tragic loss of life of inner city youth. This decision by the Supreme Court is merely a distraction from the hard work that needs to be done to fight poverty and gang violence.

With that said, here is my question: 
why is my right not be killed by a hand gun less valid than my right to own one?  I guess the right not to be killed by a handgun is not protected in the Bill of Rights. Although I do remember reading something about “life and liberty.”

sources:
(Daley Vows to Fight for Chicago’s Gun Ban)
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-supreme-court-gun-banjun27,0,1997533.story?track=rss

(Cops: Few arrested for violating ban)
http://www.suntimes.com/news/24-7/1027974,CST-NWS-trace27.article

If you want to pass this on, it’s also posted at http://smarcus.blogs.friendster.com/my_blog/ .

Dear Mrs. Obama,

Lately you’ve been under a firestorm with accusations ranging from the notion that you hate whites to the hand bump that you gave to your husband after he clinched the democratic nomination was a terrorist symbol. The claims are outlandish and expose the Conservative Right’s pitiful attempt to battle against Senator Obama with the rhetoric of fear over insightful ideas. My concern is not over these attacks. I am hoping, perhaps idealistically, that the electorate will choose your husband over the war –failing-economy recessing-status quo candidate. Who I am worried about is you and what your husband’s campaign might try and do to you. My concern was fueled by the following, “As her husband’s general election campaign gets into full swing, Mrs. Obama is getting a subtle makeover,” as quoted in the June 18th front page article of the New York Times. 

Mrs. Obama, you don’t need a makeover. Don’t let the political spin doctors force you to soften your tone or change your image. I don’t want to see you basting a turkey for National Guard troops in California or reading “The Cat in the Hat” to 3-year-olds at a day care in Ohio. You are an Ivy League trained lawyer and social activist. If you want to visit Iowa and brainstorm relief plans for Des Moines, that’s fine; if you want to meet with Chicago leaders about the teenage murder epidemic here, please, we need your help;  but don’t become some ideal of a potential first lady that is as outdated as Dolly Madison. Don’t let what happen to Hillary Clinton during the 1990s happen to you.

With that said, also don’t forget that you are not being elected to the White House, your husband is. Hillary Clinton became unpopular during her husband’s first term because she took on an inappropriate role as first lady. She took on the role of a legislator, and she wasn’t voted into office. The electorate resented her role, and to some degree rightfully so.

I understand that you have to campaign for him, you have to make appearances, but don’t lose yourself in this journey to the presidency. You need to educate the public on who you are and what you are about. Let us know why you love this country, but don’t mask the struggles you’ve encountered in your own childhood as well as the ones you witnessed attempting to tackle issues surrounding poverty on Chicago’s South Side to fit into the mold of Betty Crocker.

We don’t care how your cookies taste. We want you be who you’ve always been: a charismatic, successful professional, wife and mother.  We want you to represent Senator Obama’s views accurately and expansively, and we want you standing next to him when he takes the oath of office in January. 

For the last 72 hours the nation has been mourning Tim
Russert. His sudden death has caused a frenzied examination on his incredible impact
he has made even long before he took over the chair on “Meet the Press.” His
friends have marveled that he was an ordinary guy, the son of a street
sanitation driver who reached the pinnacle of journalistic feats as he
interviewed anyone who was anyone on Sundays at 10 a.m.

While Mr. Russert’s death is a tragedy to his family and
friends, the wider calamity is the vacuous state of political journalism that
Mr. Russert filled to some degree, but has been glaringly evident during the 21^st
century. If this situation is not bettered, we face a far greater threat to our
democracy than Saddam Hussein ever was.

  Why was Mr. Russert
so revered? According to his own words and the reflections of colleagues, he
asked politicians difficult, but fair questions, that served the public’s right
to know. He held the rich and powerful accountable for their decisions and
opinions. His lawyerly training assisted in this endeavor and in effect he was
the people’s prosecutor, convening his grand jury at the start of every week.

 Mr. Russert embodied the ideal role of political journalist.
Unfortunately, he was the lone ranger. I was watching Nancy Grace the other
night and she spent most of her program assessing the Nick Hogan situation
(Hulk Hogan’s son). Hahahahah. I kept watching, waiting for her to switch
topics, this had to be a sick joke of some sort, but no, Nick Hogan and his
phone calls from jail that were released by TMZ was the important subject
matter she addressed.

 
Nancy Grace seems incredibly intelligent. What a waste of a
mind. Indeed it is imperative that journalists not just use their time on
television to discuss the inane. Nor should they be pretty faces or men and
women who can use Smart technology to draw colorful lines on a red and blue
map.  If they do their jobs correctly,
they are essentially the fourth branch of government; the people’s branch of
government. After we elect the president, senators, or representatives, the
public is virtually powerless (sans emails and lobbying that so few people do)
to challenge the power brokers who determine the future of

America

. The
media, along with our government, failed us with the war in

Iraq

. The
coverage was entirely one sided and lacked nuance. Because of this blunder, we
are embroiled in a never ending war that is costing billions of billions of
dollars.

 
These failures are no accident. Despite the vast access to
news thanks to internet, the people reporting the news are decreasing. You may
see thousands of articles written on a particular subject as you search it on
Google, but many of them are by the same authors: Reuters or the Associated
Press. As newspapers have become less profitable, publishers are spending less
on their newsrooms and cutting our representatives, the men and women who cover
the politicians who decide how our environment is mistreated, how our money is
squandered, and how our future is bleak. The same is true for networks that
have to compete with cable news networks. Their solution is to cover light news
(Nick Hogan) rather than delve into difficult issues.

Profits drive news coverage and the people who will suffer
the most are everyday Americans, the men and women whom Tim Russert
represented. So what is the solution? The only thing I can think of is that the

United States

needs a large not for profit news organization, like the BBC, funded by the
public and private donations. Yes, PBS or NPR, but a new entity without the PBS
or NPR liberal baggage. If governmental power goes unchecked by the media, we
will face more futile wars and a visionless

America

.

 Tim Russert will be mourned. It will be discussed how big
his shoes will be to fill. What I want is for there to be many, many, many more
shoes to be filled to protect the American people from unchecked power and from
Nick Hogan.