NRA's Ill Wind Blows through the Windy City

President Obama really must say something about guns now, less he
fecklessly watch the National Rifle Association take over his beloved
Chicago. The NRA is appealing to the Supreme Court after a federal
appeals court in Chicago last week upheld a handgun ban in Chicago and
the nearby suburb of Oak Park.

The Supreme Court threw out the District of Columbia's handgun ban
last year. The appeals court said that only the Supreme Court can
overturn the ban since municipalities, under the Constitution, are
places where "local differences can be cherished as elements of liberty
rather than extirpated in order to produce a single, nationally
applicable rule."

As we all know, the NRA wants one single, applicable rule of guns
anywhere, anytime. It recently rolled Obama and the Democratic-led
Congress into allowing loaded guns in national parks. It has silenced
the Democrats on bringing back the lapsed assault weapons ban. Also
last week, the fear-mongering of the NRA about attackers preying on
loved ones around every corner persuaded the Tennessee Legislature to
override Governor Phil Bredesen's veto of a bill that allows people to
carry firearms into restaurants and bars where alcohol is served.

If there is one place Obama can take a stand, it ought to be
Chicago. Once upon a time, he had lots to say about gun violence and
assault weapons being found near schools. Throughout the presidential
campaign, he said he was confident America could find common ground
between rural family traditions of hunting and children being hunted
down and slaughtered on city streets. He often referred to specific
numbers of Chicago public school children being killed.

"There is nothing wrong, I think, with a community saying we are
going to take those illegal handguns off the streets," Obama said. ". .
. The problem is that we have got a position oftentimes by the NRA that
says any regulation whatsoever is the camel's nose under the tent. . .
. I think we can have reasonable, thoughtful gun control measures that
still respect the Second Amendment and people's traditions."

Since Obama has been president, the NRA has been getting what it
wants, no regulations and a censoring of reasonable, thoughtful debate.
Meanwhile, the children in Chicago keep getting mowed down, with three
dozen school-age children killed so far this year. Chicago police
Superintendent Jody Weis told CNN, "Take weapons such as assault rifles
out of an urban area. I just don't see a need for an assault rifle in
the City of Chicago."

When Education Secretary Arne Duncan was running the Chicago public
schools, he told CNN, "If that happened to one of Chicago's wealthiest
suburbs, and God forbid it ever did, but if it was a child being shot
dead every two weeks . . . do you think the status quo would remain?
There's no way it would. All hell would break loose."

But now, with killing of children still going on, Duncan told the
Chicago Tribune in April that he had not spoken with Obama about the
issue. Speaking of his own past efforts, he told the Tribune,
"I don't have any keen insight there. . . . I thought I had made things
better in some areas. This is an area where I was a total failure."

The Obama administration has been such a failure on guns that
Representative Carolyn McCarthy, the Democrat from New York whose
husband was killed in the Long Island Railroad rampage of 1993, told
the Washington Post after the
House voted to allow guns in national parks that, "We have a Democratic
president, a Democratic House, and a Democratic Senate and we're
passing more gun legislation than when there was a Republican in the
White House. It's disappointing." McCarthy further told the Associated
Press, "The NRA is basically taking over the House and the Senate."

Now the NRA wants Chicago. If Obama does not take that as a personal
affront, then it is all over and the NRA will take over the White House
in a politically bloodless coup.