Letters to the Editor

Gun-control fees as bad as a ban

I was very happy to see Otis McDonald prevail in his case against Chicago ("High court limits gun ban," Tuesday), but city and state governments simply will not get the message. Chicago's Mayor Richard M. Daley has already vowed to come right back with new gun-control laws. Many politicians seem to think that there is a difference between "you cannot have a gun" and "there is such a long and expensive administrative process that no one will actually be able to own a gun."

Some may not like my analogy, but the 24th Amendment made poll taxes - fees charged by states or cities to vote - unconstitutional. The gun-control schemes take the same course. Charging fees rather than outright bans as a means to a desired end is an attempt to run around established laws. Why should fees charged to defend yourself be constitutional?

The dissent in the McDonald case illustrates the way many liberals think of the Second Amendment. Justice Stephen Breyer wrote that he "can find nothing in the Second Amendment's text, history, or underlying rationale that could warrant characterizing it as 'fundamental,' insofar as it seeks to protect the keeping and bearing of arms for private self-defense purposes." Really? It is hard for me to believe that a man who went to Stanford and Harvard and is a Supreme Court justice cannot find any underlying rationale in "shall not be infringed."

Robert Kump

Philadelphia

rob.kump@gmail.com

Getting the facts on gun-control laws

The Inquirer's editorial (Tuesday) on the McDonald ruling was at odds with the facts. The editorial claimed that "the court's position runs counter to decades of mainstream legal views on the Second Amendment." This is incorrect. The mainstream debate has long since shifted from whether gun ownership is an individual right to the details of what the right protects. The Inquirer is a few decades behind on the scholarship.

The editorial then quotes Bryan Miller as saying New Jersey has "among the lowest per-capita rates of gun deaths in the country." Wrong. The Centers for Disease Control's mortality data rank New Jersey 24th in gun deaths. I'll be generous and say the evidence is inconclusive on the real effects of gun-control laws.

Christopher Dodson