When California legislators enacted the country’s first ban on military-style rifles in 1989, they gave no weight to the fundamental right of armed self-defense guaranteed by the Second Amendment — a right the U.S. Supreme Court did not explicitly acknowledge until nearly two decades later.

But as U.S. District Judge Roger Benitez observed in his ruling against California’s “assault weapon” ban last Friday, it should now be clear that the outright prohibition of such firearms cannot pass constitutional muster.

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California’s Assault Weapons Control Act, which is similar to laws enforced by a handful of other states, originally applied to a list of more than 50 specific brands and models. In 1999 the law was amended to cover any semi-automatic, centerfire rifle that accepts a detachable magazine and has any of these features: a pistol grip that “protrudes conspicuously beneath the action of the weapon,” a forward pistol grip, a thumbhole stock, a folding or telescoping stock, a flash suppressor or a grenade/flare launcher.

The rifles prohibited by the California law are among the most popular firearms sold in the United States. Nearly 20 million have been manufactured or imported during the last three decades.

As far as Benitez is concerned, that should be the end of the matter. In the landmark 2008 case that overturned the District of Columbia’s handgun ban, the Supreme Court held that the Second Amendment protects the right to own weapons “in common use” for “lawful purposes like self-defense” — a test that the rifles covered by California’s law clearly satisfy.

Although handguns are used to commit crimes far more often than “assault weapons,” the Court rejected the notion that a blanket ban on an entire category of firearms could be justified by the danger they pose in the hands of criminals. It also rejected the idea that such a ban could pass muster because it allowed people to use other kinds of firearms for self-defense.

California nevertheless deployed both of those arguments in defense of the AWCA. Benitez, like the Supreme Court, was unpersuaded.

Benitez concluded that the AWCA cannot survive even under the “intermediate scrutiny” test that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit (which includes California) tends to apply in gun control cases. That test requires a “reasonable fit” between an “important government interest” (in this case, prevention of gun violence) and the means chosen to further that interest.

In terms of destructive power, a rifle with the features on California’s list is indistinguishable from the same rifle without them. It fires the same ammunition at the same rate with the same muzzle velocity.

California argued that some of the prohibited features help “maintain accuracy in rapid-fire scenarios,” making a rifle especially suitable for mass shootings. A video submitted as evidence in this case cast doubt on that claim, showing that an AR-15 without any of those features fired with “approximately the same speed and accuracy” as an AR-15 with all of them.

Assuming that California has succeeded in making rifles less accurate, that is hardly an improvement. Accuracy is especially important when a law-abiding gun owner uses a rifle in self-defense, a scenario that Benitez illustrated with several real-life examples.

Similarly, California has arbitrarily banned the adjustable stock that makes it easier for someone of small stature to use a rifle; the pistol grip that “gives a homeowner a secure hold with one hand while the other hand holds a telephone or spare magazine”; and the flash suppressor that “prevents the night-time home defender from being blinded by her own muzzle flash.”

Despite all these decrees, Benitez noted, the AWCA has not had an observable effect on the frequency of mass shootings involving “assault weapons,” meaning “California’s experiment has been a failure.”

The impact of the federal “assault weapon” ban that expired in 2004 was similarly unimpressive. President Joe Biden nevertheless wants to try this experiment again. The question is whether the Supreme Court will let him.

Jacob Sullum is a senior editor at Reason magazine.

Send letters to [email protected].

How can California’s ‘assault weapon’ ban be unconstitutional?on June 8, 2021 at 8:03 pm Read More »

Man killed in Wentworth Gardens shootingon June 8, 2021 at 8:16 pm

A man was fatally shot Tuesday in Wentworth Gardens.

He was near the sidewalk about 1 p.m. in the 3800 block of South Wells Street when a vehicle approached and someone inside opened fire, Chicago police said.

The 27-year-old was struck in the head and taken to the University of Chicago Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead, police said. He hasn’t been identified.

No arrests have been made. Area One detectives are investigating.

Man killed in Wentworth Gardens shootingon June 8, 2021 at 8:16 pm Read More »

Didn’t Cubs waive the white flag (no, not a ‘W’ one) when they traded Yu Darvish?on June 8, 2021 at 8:49 pm

With about 100 games to go this season, have the Cubs really abandoned the idea of blowing things up and starting over?

That’s what some national baseball columnists are writing, the narrative being that this group of players — led by the resurgent Kris Bryant — has too good a shot to win a division title for general manager Jed Hoyer to start aggressively shopping Bryant, Javy Baez, Anthony Rizzo and others before the July 30 trade deadline.

But we believe what we want to believe, don’t we?

The Cubs wrap up a rough West Coast swing Wednesday — against Padres starter Yu Darvish — and will return to Wrigley Field having been replaced by the Brewers as the hottest team in the National League. The Cubs’ subpar rotation — their fatal flaw? — keeps taking on leaks, the latest being a blister that derailed Adbert Alzolay in Monday’s start. It’s now a four-team race in the NL Central, the struggling Cardinals and surging Reds also very much in it, and first place might not be any likelier a destination for the Cubs than fourth.

So just know that the white flag waving in the distance isn’t necessarily one of those adorable ones with a bold, blue “W” in the middle of it. It might be one of those sad, pathetic ones that simply means surrender.

The end could be near.

Or did it arrive already? Because it sure seemed to me that Hoyer and the salary-dumping Cubs were capitulating in December when they traded Darvish, who had three years and $62 million remaining on his contract, to San Diego. What a great deal that wasn’t, folks. The Cubs included Darvish’s catcher, Victor Caratini, and got back veteran starter Zach Davies along with four prospects who all were ranked, according to MLB Pipeline, outside the Padres’ top 10.

Maybe infielder Reginald Preciado and/or outfielder Owen Caissie — teenagers ranked 10th and 11th among Cubs prospects — will blow up down the line. Maybe Darvish, 34, will break down. But here’s what we know: Darvish is better than ever, and Davies isn’t coming close to plugging that hole.

The Padres are 11-1 in Darvish’s starts as the 2020 Cy Young runner-up continues down the elite path he has lived on since the 2019 All-Star break. Eighteen earned runs is all Darvish has allowed over those 12 starts. His only loss came in April — against the Dodgers and Clayton Kershaw — when the defending World Series champs touched him for a single run in seven innings.

In 13 post-break starts in 2019, Darvish was 4-4 with a 2.76 ERA and an 0.81 WHIP. In 12 starts last year, the numbers were 8-3, 2.01 and 0.96. This year: 6-1, 2.25 and 0.93. It’s just who he is — confident, consistent and on the short list of the best starters in the game.

Entering Tuesday’s start, Davies was lasting about an inning and a half less per outing than Darvish. But we won’t get into the rest of his run-of-the-mill numbers, because it wouldn’t even be fair. Comparing him with Darvish is like comparing David Bote and Nico Hoerner with Bryant and Baez. Or a sad surrender flag with a bold “W” one.

Chicago White Sox v New York Yankees — Will La Russa get to 3,000 wins?

JUST SAYIN’

Tony La Russa — the real Mr. 3,000?

With all due respect to hit machine Nick Madrigal (come on, those gag T-shirts at spring training didn’t create themselves), La Russa actually is close enough to a 3,000 milestone that we can at least start entertaining the possibility he’ll get there. After moving into second on the all-time list Sunday with his 2,764th managerial victory, might La Russa — believed to be on a three-year deal with the White Sox — join Connie Mack in the 3,000s someday?

If he were to pick up another 150 or so the rest of this season and all next season, he’d have a real shot at it in 2023.

Admit it: You love contemplating two more whole years for La Russa on the South Side.

o Seldom mentioned: Mack, who managed the Philadelphia Athletics for half a century, lost more games (3,948) than he won (3,731). His winning percentage of .486 was a far cry from La Russa’s .536.

Even La Russa’s terrific winning percentage trails those of the next four on the wins list — John McGraw (.586), Bobby Cox (.556), Joe Torre (.538) and Sparky Anderson (.545) — as well as 20 others among the 65 managers with at least 1,000 wins. Sixteen of the 65 had losing records.

o First the Yermin Mercedes story, now the Patrick Wisdom story?

What did Chicago baseball fans do to be so lucky?

And how long until the next raker we’ve never heard of gets here?

o OK, it’s settled: Giannis Antetokounmpo is never winning a title in Milwaukee.

I know it. You know it. Even your Cousin Earl up in Wauwatosa knows it, and he’s usually the last one to pick up on anything.

o Speaking of Wisconsin, all Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers did Tuesday was blow off the first day of mandatory minicamp. Who’s left on the depth chart, anyway, after Jordan Love and Jake from State Farm?

Didn’t Cubs waive the white flag (no, not a ‘W’ one) when they traded Yu Darvish?on June 8, 2021 at 8:49 pm Read More »

Feels Like Midsummeron June 8, 2021 at 7:06 pm

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Florida’s schools are better too.on June 8, 2021 at 7:27 pm

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Florida’s schools are better too.

Florida’s schools are better too.on June 8, 2021 at 7:27 pm Read More »

Extraon June 8, 2021 at 8:07 pm

Free Your Mind

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When children awake to monstersPhil Kadneron June 8, 2021 at 7:41 pm

Dozens of family members and supporters of 7-year-old Jaslyn Adams gather for a vigil outside the girl’s grandmother’s West Side home, Wednesday evening, April 21, 2021. Jaslyn was fatally shot Sunday, April 18, while in line at a McDonald’s drive-thru with her father, who suffered one gunshot wound to the back and survived. | Ashlee Rezin Garcia/Sun-Times

Children deserve better. Telling them to stay away from their parks and friends is not an answer. It is a sickening admission of defeat.

Our children are being murdered. Gunned down in the streets. Shot in the parks. Murdered sitting on the porches of their homes.

They go to bed listening to the sounds of gunshots outside their windows and awake to a living nightmare where monsters stalk the streets looking for children to kill.

This is not a horror movie. It is everyday life.

A teenager is shot by assassins while walking her dogs.

A 7-year-old is riddled by bullets fired by two gunmen as she sits in a car at a McDonald’s drive-thru.

A baby is shot in the head while traveling in a car on Lake Shore Drive.

Each time the politicians say this must end. The church leaders urge their communities to rally around the families. Flower memorials are built, and tears are shed.

And then some other child is murdered. Shot dead.

Children are told to remain in their homes. The streets are not safe. But a bullet can come through a window at any time and kill a youngster in her home who has done nothing wrong. It happens.

Such atrocities used to be unacceptable. If a child was killed our entire society would come together, not only to denounce the murderer, but to find him and send him to prison.

Even criminals realized that shooting a child, by accident or as a threat, would cause everyone to turn on them, including their fellow gang members.

Not anymore. Now children are murdered every day. There is often no remorse expressed by the gunmen. Our moral compass has been crushed. Violence is an accepted part of daily life, along with the tears shed for the dearly departed.

Those tears have become a fast-evaporating form of moisture in the world.

It is impossible for people to live this way without something changing within them. It is impossible for children to grow up like this without being damaged forever by the bloodshed.

We can blame narcotics. We can blame the gangs. We can blame the police, schools, parents and the government. And always we blame the guns.

We have done this repeatedly. It doesn’t stop children from dying violent deaths in their own neighborhoods.

What good are politicians, we might ask, if they can’t assure the safety of children in the streets, in the parks, in their own homes?

What do all the words of outrage really mean if children can’t enjoy a summer without gunshots ringing in their ears? The temperature is rising. We should expect more dead bodies. This is what people say.

This must come to an end now, along with all the excuses. There must be a commitment to protecting the lives of every child and punishing those who would take their lives. There must be a willingness to stop making excuses for the evil that roams the streets.

We must finally recognize the nightmare is of our own creation.

Children deserve better. We can all agree. Telling them to stay away from their parks and their gatherings with friends is not an answer. It is a sickening admission of defeat.

This is a war, and our children are its victims. This is a life and death struggle and we have failed to put up much of a fight. We cannot claim to be living in a civilized country when young people have lost their right to grow into adulthood.

Our children are being murdered. They go to sleep each night listening to the sound of gunshots outside their windows. They awake each morning to the realization that monsters are stalking their streets.

It is time the adults stepped up and said, “No more.” We are here to protect you and will do whatever it takes to make the world safe. Hell, to make your street safe.

Save our children.

Send letters to [email protected]

When children awake to monstersPhil Kadneron June 8, 2021 at 7:41 pm Read More »

About Face turns 25 by nurturing the next generation of LGBTQ+ artistsCatey Sullivanon June 8, 2021 at 5:45 pm

About Face Theatre takes the mystery out of training next-generation LGBTQ+ artists—while putting it into a streaming production.

Read from the scroll of off-Loop theaters making headlines and winning acclaim 25 years ago, and you’ll find precious few that remain today. About Face sits in the pantheon of exceptions; the one-in-countless companies that have both the business acumen and artistic passion to sustain their idealism and their theater over the long, long haul. …Read More

About Face turns 25 by nurturing the next generation of LGBTQ+ artistsCatey Sullivanon June 8, 2021 at 5:45 pm Read More »

City Council’s Committee on Public Safety portrayed as do-nothing panelFran Spielmanon June 8, 2021 at 6:15 pm

Chicago City Hall, 121 N. LaSalle St. — Chicago City Hall. | Sun-Times file

The Chicago Justice Project released a 20-year study portraying the committee as anemic over the last 20 years in hopes of pressuring the committee to approve four stalled police accountability ordinances.

The Chicago Justice Project on Tuesday turned up the heat on the City Council to approve four stalled police accountability ordinances by portraying its Committee on Public Safety as anemic over the last 20 years.

Between 2000 and 2020, the Police Committee-turned-Committee on Public Safety held 186 meetings and considered 489 agenda items, according to a Justice Project review. Of the agenda items considered, 80% were unrelated to police oversight. Only 15% had anything to do with the Chicago Police Department, the study showed.

Less than 5% of committee action related to the alphabet soup of police accountability agencies: CPD’s now-defunct Office of Professional Standards, the Independent Police Review Authority and its replacement, the Civilian Office of Police Accountability.

Instead of flexing its legislative muscle to rein in CPD and strengthen police accountability, the committee has spent much of its time donating used police and fire equipment and “rubber-stamping” mayoral appointees, the study showed.

Tracy Siska, executive director of the Justice Project, said the 20-year record is a clarion call for aldermen to “do their jobs.”

“We have experienced misconduct and abuse for decades in Chicago with no end. The Laquan McDonald murder didn’t happen in 1980. It happened in 2014. Anthony Alvarez just happened. There’s a long line of misconduct and abuse for a hundred years that the City Council has turned their back on and shirked their responsibility for,” Siska said.

“Don’t ask the Police Department to make changes. Demand them. They’re the legislators. They set the rules. It’s time to start doing it … and restrain policing for things they don’t want to happen.”

Siska is specifically demanding approval of four stalled ordinances:

• Sweeping search warrant reforms championed by Black female aldermen aimed at preventing a repeat of the botched raid on the wrong home that forced Anjanette Young to stand naked before male police officers.

• A plan for civilian police oversight endorsed by the Council’s Black, Hispanic and Progressive caucuses. It would ask Chicago voters in the 2022 primary to approve a binding referendum empowering an 11-member civilian police oversight commission to hire and fire the police superintendent, negotiate police contracts and set CPD’s budget. Mayor Lori Lightfoot has introduced her own plan that retains those powers for the mayor.

• Creating a “robust” database of misconduct complaints filed against Chicago Police officers, not the limited database dating no further back than 2000, as Lightfoot has offered.

• A “Police Settlement Transparency Accountability” ordinance giving aldermen the facts before they’re asking to sign off on settlements tied to allegations of police misconduct and mandate that the Committee on Public Safety meet monthly to consider those settlements and twice a year to focus on police accountability.

The Anjanette Young ordinance “limiting how and when they can do no-knock or knock-warrants and who they can point guns at” is a perfect place to start, Siska said.

“No one is advocating that the City Council tell them how many police to have assigned to what districts. … This is saying the citizens of Chicago and their representatives want policing to be restrained in this way,” he said.

Public Safety Committee Chairman Chris Taliaferro (29th), a former CPD officer, bristled at the suggestion he presides over a do-nothing committee.

“We are not an oversight body. We’re a legislative body. Yes, we create ordinances that affect our police department and fire department. But we should not be looked at as one of oversight. Rather, one of legislation,” the chairman said.

“I don’t think you should ever cave in to any type of political pressure to get something done. When you get something done, it should be thought out, negotiated and then passed. For their assessment to be ‘you rush ordinances and you rush legislation to vote,’ I think, is a poor assessment by them.”

Taliaferro said he has scheduled a June 18 meeting to allow aldermen to choose between Lightfoot’s watered-down version of civilian police oversight and a stronger version endorsed by the Council’s three most powerful caucuses.

He wouldn’t guess which way that vote would go.

Asked why he has yet to schedule the hearing he promised on the Anjanette Young ordinance, Taliaferro argued the legislation championed by African-American women in the Council goes too far.

“It’s asking to do something we have not done in the past. That is, codify police procedures. We’ve never done that. There are no police procedures that are a part of our city ordinances,” he said.

“The correct process to do that is … through changing police policies and procedures in their general orders.”

City Council’s Committee on Public Safety portrayed as do-nothing panelFran Spielmanon June 8, 2021 at 6:15 pm Read More »

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