[COLUMN] Gun battle returns to Supreme Court

McDonald v. City of Chicago, a Supreme Court case in which oral arguments took place Tuesday, is perhaps one of the most important cases since the end of the War for Southern Independence.

The case deals with a patently un-American handgun ban in Chicago.

Fortunately, it appears the court is going to rule the ban unconstitutional and return a little bit of freedom to the American people.

While facially, the case is about the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms, it's the 14th Amendment ramifications that will prove the most interesting.

It has been almost two years since the court ruled in District of Columbia v. Heller that the Second Amendment is a personal right. In other words, the Framers intended to protect the right of the individual to keep and bear arms rather than, as liberals ignorantly like to claim, protect the right of the states to maintain a militia.

To anyone who reads the Second Amendment - "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." - the meaning is clear. Unless, of course, you hate the idea of people being free and wish to impose your personal fear of guns on the rest of the population.

The underlying principle of the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights was to maintain individual liberty. The Framers were bright men who understood that government should fear the people.

A quick reading of the Framers' writings makes it clear they believed the best way to maintain a free state was to have an armed populace.

It was an armed populace that finally freed the American people from the tyrannical British government of King George III. British soldiers, acting on secret orders, were on their way to seize our guns when the "shot heard 'round the world" was fired in Massachusetts on April 9, 1775. We all know how that turned out for the British.

So when the Framers enacted the Second Amendment, they knew exactly what they meant despite liberal revisionist history.

The problem rests, however, in the fact that the Bill of Rights only applies to the federal government.

Enter the 14th Amendment.

Adopted on July 9, 1868, a few years after the War for Southern Independence, the 14th Amendment radically altered constitutional law in the United States.

Included in the 14th Amendment is the Due Process Clause - "No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."

The Supreme Court eventually interpreted that clause to mean that some of the amendments should apply to the states in a theory called "incorporation." In the 142 years since its adoption, every significant part of the Bill of Rights has been incorporated - applied to the states - with the notable exception of the Second Amendment.

While the Heller decision was a landmark Second Amendment case, it only applied to the federal government because it concerned a gun ban in Washington, D.C., which is a federal enclave.

The promise of McDonald, if the Supreme Court rules the way most observers expect by overturning the Chicago handgun ban, is that it will finally apply the Second Amendment to the states and thereby prevent state and local government from adopting Draconian, un-American gun laws.

As for those liberals who keep warning about a blood bath if Americans are free to keep and bear arms, it is important to note that after the Heller decision and repeal of one of the strictest gun-control laws in the nation, murders in the capital dropped to a 43-year-low.

The right to keep and bear arms is not only a constitutional right; it is a God-given natural right. By our nature as free human beings, we have the inalienable right to keep and bear arms. Any attempts by government to restrict that right should always be viewed skeptically and seen for what they are: an attack on our hard-fought liberties.