Chicago Daily Observer

Anita Alvarez, Candidate for Cook County State’s Attorney is interviewed on Gun Owners Rights and other issues by Jeff Berkowitz on Public Affairs.

“A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state: the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed”—United States Constitution, second amendment of the Bill of Rights

Subject only to the police power, the right of the individual citizen to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.—- Constitution of the State of Illinois, Article 1, Section 22

Illinois’ 1970 Constitution provides gun grabbing counties and city councils with an invaluable mechanism so as to create two strata of gun rights in Illinois. One strata that would pass muster south of I. 80 in the more crimson part of Illinois, and another that would enable the northern regions of Illinois to infringe upon the second amendment rights of the law-abiding citizenry in cities like Evanston, Wilmette, and Chicago. The clause that enables such constitutional mischief is that pesky “subject only to the ... Read More...

There was a pro-Second Amendment rally at the Thompson Center on July 11, 2008, and bloggers know about it.

There were quite a few people, up to 500, by some counts, photos and some reporting on the events that occurred, by an independent website or two.

Some pundits questioned whether the Chicago Tribune would cover the rally.

But, to no one’s surprise, the Chicago Tribune skipped the story, regardless of the significance of the recent Supreme Court decision, with a search returning a warmed over story of professional activist Fr. Pfleger instead of the news. Perhaps the Tribune did not have room in the paper for the story, as they are running a series of windy PR pieces painting Sen. Obama is a centrist demanding individual responsiblity, despite all evidence in his voting record to the contrary.

Kudo’s to ABC-7 and Chicago ... Read More...

Those 27 words—the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution—probably caused more violent argument and political polarization through the years than any sentence since the Emancipation Proclamation.

In essence the question was whether the founding parents were saying that anyone, anytime, had a right to own a gun or whether that right was restricted to the members of a militia—or National Guard as we would know it today.

Gun-control advocates—mostly liberal Democrats and card-carrying members of the American Civil Liberties Union like me—took the latter interpretation as gospel, while a substantial majority of Americans, strongly encouraged by the National Rifle Association, took the other side, tossing out the initial qualifying phrase.

In June the U.S. Supreme Court finally made a definitive ruling, ... Read More...

The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision that gun ownership is an individual right turned Mayor Richard Daley into a fiery pillar, visible to the naked eye as far away as Rockford.

Daley declared the District of Columbia vs. Heller decision to be “frightening,” “outrageous” and a “return to the days of the Wild West.” You would have thought the court had ruled that free bazookas were to be handed out to gang members..

Court Affirms Right to Own Guns
The Supreme Court struck down a District of Columbia handgun ban and affirmed Americans’ rights to own firearms in the court’s first definitive pronouncement on gun rights in U.S. history