The high court has granted the NRA a gift. The powerful gun lobby was almost unchallenged in Washington. Now they seek to steamroll the entire country. And America will pay the price in uncontrolled gun violence.
The National Rifle Association sued the city of San Francisco on Friday to overturn its ban on handguns in public housing, a day after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a handgun ban in the nation’s capital.
The legal action follows a similar lawsuit against the city of Chicago over its handgun ban, filed within hours of Thursday’s high court ruling.
In San Francisco, the NRA was joined by the Washington state-based Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms and a gun owner who lives in the city’s Valencia Gardens housing project.
The gun owner, who is gay, says he keeps the weapon to defend himself from “sexual orientation hate crimes.” He was not identified in the complaint because he said he fears retaliation.
San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera said that the Supreme Court ruling didn’t address gun bans on government property and that he is “confident that our local gun control measures are on sound legal footing and will survive legal challenges.”
[...]A state appeals court has overturned a broader citywide gun ban that voters approved in 2005.
The Chicago lawsuit challenges the city’s 1982 ordinance making it illegal to possess or sell handguns there.
And tragically Obama will be no help:
In recent weeks, he toughened his stance on Iran and backed an expansion of the government's wiretapping powers. On Wednesday, he said states should be allowed to execute child rapists. When the Supreme Court the next day struck down the District of Columbia's ban on handguns, he did not complain...
..."I've been struck by the speed and decisiveness of his move to the center," said Will Marshall, president of the centrist Progressive Policy Institute...
...And Obama endorsed a compromise wiretapping bill despite stiff opposition from liberal activists. MoveOn.org, the liberal online activist group, asked its members to flood Obama's campaign office with phone calls and e-mails urging him to support a filibuster of the bill.
The changes carry some risk that Obama will diminish the image he has sought to build as a new type of leader who will change how Washington conducts business. McCain and other Republicans have used his recent policy statements to argue that Obama is a traditional politician, unwilling to take clear stands on tough issues and abandoning his principles when he finds it advantageous.
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