An unnecessary decision

The village I live in has made it illegal to own handguns. The city I work in has made it illegal to own handguns. Voters in both my village and in Chicago accept -- even embrace -- these laws. Yet something that isn't broken is about to be "fixed," thanks to the Supreme Court.

In their ruling about the DC gun ban, striking it down with a razor-thin 5-4 majority, the Supremes have imperiled Chicago's law. And Mayor Daley, God bless him, is pissed. He began by calling the ruling "very frightening" and went on to add:

"Does this lead to everyone having a gun in our society? 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?"

I have come to believe that guns are a regional issue. Citizens in Chicago, Philadelphia, San Francisco, etc., don't necessarily view them as a "right." They are, instead, often seen as a peril to our neighborhoods and children. It's no accident that where crimes like urban dog fighting flourish, so do illegal firearms. I have also vacationed in Arkansas and Wisconsin often enough to know that there's a culture of hunters, law-abiding people who consider their guns a valuable part of their lifestyle and heritage.

The reality is that this is a big country, and that attitudes and needs change and shift as you move from sea to shining sea. If a majority of voters here accept our gun ban, why can't it stand? Second Amendment, yeah, yeah, yeah. Our founding fathers built the Constitution to be flexible. I believe the Second Amendment should be repealed, and the "right" of gun ownership should be determined by municipality. And, by the way, no one will ever be convince me that great men like Jefferson and Adams meant for the Constitution to protect gang bangers and to facilitate children killing children, which is what the handgun ban in Chicago is designed to curb.

But, alas, I'm a realist. Barack Obama's disappointing response to this ruling pointed me to the writing on the wall. And if the handgun bans here and in Chicago are repealed, I'm going to miss sleeping soundly at night.