The Constitution Matters: It Means What It Says

The Constitution and the Second Amendment are in the spotlight this week on two fronts.  First is that oral arguments are being held in the McDonald v Chicago case to possibly apply the holding in Heller to the states.

In addition, Senators are beginning their evaluation of the judicial nomination of Berkeley professor Goodwin Liu to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in a vote that will tell a great deal about Senator Reid’s adherence to Constitutional principles such as those specified in the Second Amendment.

Senator Reid has a terrible record on judicial nominees to the U.S. Supreme Court.  In DC v Heller, there were four dissenters from the holding that the right to bear arms is an individual right.  Harry Reid had a chance to vote on three and he voted for each one – Breyer, Souter and Ginsburg.  Harry Reid has a chance to vote on four of the majority justices, and he voted against three of them – Thomas, Alito and Roberts.  If Harry Reid had been successful in defeating any of these three, Heller would have been in jeopardy.  That’s six out of seven bad votes on the Supreme Court.

Four of those bad votes were cast in his very first term, when my primary opponent Sue Lowden was his loyal contributor.

There will be hearings on professor Liu, but I am specifically interested in a particular book he co-authored on jurisprudence entitled “Keeping Faith with the Constitution.”

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Tags: Goodwin liu, gun control, gun rights, Harry Reid, judicial nominations
Posted Mar 4th 2010 at 9:46 am in Congress, Culture, Justice/Legal, News, Politics, State Politics | 84014125 Commentshttp://biggovernment.com/dtarkanian/2010/03/04/the-constitution-matters-it-says-what-it-says/The+Constitution+Matters%3A+It+Means+What+It+Says2010-03-04+17%3A46%3A12Danny+Tarkanian

More Guns, Less Crime

The District of Columbia’s murder rate plummeted by an astounding 25 percent last year, much faster than for the US as a whole or for similarly sized cities. If you had asked Chicago’s Mayor Daley, that wasn’t supposed to happen. The Supreme Court’s 2008 decision to strike down DC’s handgun ban and gunlock requirements should have lead to a surge in murders, with Wild West shootouts. The Supreme Court might keep Daley’s predictions in mind today as they hear the oral arguments on Tuesday in the Chicago handgun ban case.

Everyone in DC now knows that murder rates rose after the handgun ban and fell after they were removed. Unfortunately, Chicago never learned that lesson. The forthcoming third edition of More Guns, Less Crime shows that in the 17 years after its ban on new handguns went into effect, there are only two years where Chicago’s murder rate was as low as it was in 1982. Chicago’s murder rate fell relative to other largest 50 largest cities prior to the ban and rose relative to them afterwards. For example, Chicago’s murder rate went from equalling the average for those other cities in 1982, to exceeding their average murder rate by 32 percent in 1992 and by 68 percent in 2002. There is no year after the ban that Chicago’s murder rate fared as well relative to other cities as it did in 1982.

Similar comparisons exist for the top ten largest cities, the US as a whole, or the counties that boarder Chicago. The accompanying figure shows how Chicago’s murder rates changed relative to the rates in the adjacent counties. In the five years before the ban, Chicago’s murder rate fell by 28 percent relative to those counties. (County level crime data only goes back to 1977.) in the five years after the ban, Chicago’s murder rate doubled relative to those other counties.

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Tags: Chicago, crime, gun control, murder, second amendment
Posted Mar 1st 2010 at 8:53 am in Justice/Legal, Regulation | 82354340 Commentshttp://biggovernment.com/jlott/2010/03/01/more-guns-less-crime/More+Guns%2C+Less+Crime2010-03-01+16%3A53%3A38John+Lott

Chicago Mayor Daley Blames Fort Hood On America’s Love Of Guns!

On Monday, Chicago Mayor Daley blamed the Ft. Hood Jihad Massacre on America’s love of guns!

“Unfortunately, America loves Guns. We love guns to a point where that uh we see devastation on a daily basis. You don’t blame a group.”

The Mayor is using a straw-man argument that conveniently provides him with an opportunity to politicize the terrorist attack as part and parcel with America’s love of guns.

Mayor Daley, and other politicians, like to blame gun violence on the guns themselves because that is so much easier than admitting any inconvenient (politically incorrect) truths which might be revealed if they were to place blame where it belongs.

Kids murdering each other in the inner city? That’s because of guns, not the War On Drugs which turns poor children into black market drug distributing gang members.

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Tags: Chicago Mayor Richard Daley, gun control, jihad, political correctness, terrorism
Posted Nov 10th 2009 at 10:57 am in Culture, Defense, Politics | 281781,254 Commentshttp://biggovernment.com/amarcus/2009/11/10/chicago-mayor-daley-blames-fort-hood-on-americas-love-of-guns/Chicago+Mayor+Daley+Blames+Fort+Hood+On+America%E2%80%99s+Love+Of+Guns%212009-11-10+17%3A57%3A45Andrew++Marcus

Revisiting An Old-Fashioned Newspaper: We’re Not Missing Much

There are still these things called newspapers out there. Yeah, I was surprised too – I gave up hardcopy papers way back when dissent was still patriotic. But out for a Sunday lunch at one of our favorite places in lovely Manhattan Beach, I noticed the front section of the Los Angeles Times lying forlornly on a counter between the napkins and the hot sauce. Someone had left it behind. The price being right, I decided to see what I’ve been missing.

The first thing I found was a long story on how the conservative movement is struggling to prove that it is not infused with racism. I was unaware of that the burden of proof is upon the accused to demonstrate its innocence, but then I remembered what I was reading. The banner picture of Joe Wilson summed up the way the article would combine dubious preconceptions with the lamest kind of liberal conventional wisdom and ignorance of the most basic elements of the conservative movement. (more…)

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Tags: Doyle McManus, gun control, Iran, Los Angeles Times, mainstream media
Posted Sep 26th 2009 at 5:03 am in Culture, Featured Story, Media Criticism | 916274 Commentshttp://biggovernment.com/kschlichter/2009/09/26/revisiting-an-old-fashioned-newspaper-were-not-missing-much/Revisiting+An+Old-Fashioned+Newspaper%3A++We%E2%80%99re+Not+Missing+Much2009-09-26+12%3A03%3A26Kurt+Schlichter