Firing back at King Richard (in self-defense)

Chicago Mayor Richard Daley has chosen to make the gun issue personal. Okay, I'll bite.

Daley's reaction to the Supreme Court's recent ruling (D.C. v. Heller) overturning the Washington, D.C. ban on gun ownership was as predictable as it was incoherent.

In one of his signature assaults on logic, Daley, a known enemy of modern contrivances like "facts," deftly managed to completely mischaracterize the Court's holding at the same time as embarrassing the faculty at DePaul University School of Law where he somehow obtained a law degree.

"You can't carry a gun into the Supreme Court...and so why should our streets of our American cities be open to someone carrying a gun?" Daley hissed to the compliant Chicago press corps.

In fact, the Supreme Court ruled on the issue of the right to own a gun not the right to carry a gun on the streets. Although, it will come as a great surprise to Daley that 40 of the nation's 50 states have laws that do indeed allow law-abiding citizens the right to carry a weapon.

Have those 40 states and the "American cities" in those states become the "Old West" as Daley intimated would now happen to bastions of peace and tranquility like Chicago in the wake of the high court's decision?

"The rest of the world is laughing at us," said Daley.

Perhaps, Your Honor, they are just laughing at an adult who pronounces the number 3, "tree"?

And who pray tell do you think 80% of America is laughing at, themselves or a hysterical ninny who fails to see the irony in presiding over a city that bans handgun ownership and yet is routinely afflicted with the highest number of handgun-related homicides in the nation?

The plain reality is that with more than 240 million guns in private hands in America, it is no more feasible to eliminate the existence of guns than it is to eliminate the existence of ill-informed politicians.

Thus, in addition to confirming the plain language of our Constitution, the Supreme Court's decision simply advanced the idea that gun ownership should not be restricted to criminals. Revolutionary it is not.

It is political bullies like Daley who demonize the law-abiding because of their inability to control the lawless. The policies driven by his political sleight-of-tongue end up costing the lives of the law-abiding.

So call me a disloyal subject, but I am not interested in entrusting my fate to King Richard. I therefore appreciate the rare victory for ordinary, law-abiding Chicagoans provided by Antonin Scalia and the other four constitutionally literate members of the Supreme Court.