McDonald v. City of Chicago. This is Otis McDonald.

[scandal 951]

Long article, but a good read.....

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/c...0167,full.story

THE PUBLIC FACE OF GUN RIGHTS

The Supreme Court will decide the legality of the city's handgun ban in McDonald v. City of Chicago. This is Otis McDonald.

Otis McDonald is a plaintiff in a case challenging Chicago's handgun ban.

By Colleen MastonyTribune reporter

January 30, 2010

From behind the wheel of his hulking GMC Suburban, 76-year-old Otis McDonald leads a crime-themed tour of his Morgan Park neighborhood. He points to the yellow brick bungalow he says is a haven for drug dealers. Down the street is the alley where five years ago he saw a teenager pull out a gun and take aim at a passing car.

Around the corner, he gestures to the weed-bitten roadside where three thugs once threatened his life.

"I know every day that I come out in the streets, the youngsters will shoot me as quick as they will a policeman," says McDonald, a trim man with a neat mustache and closely cropped gray hair. "They'll shoot a policeman as quick as they will any of their young gangbangers."

To defend himself, McDonald says, he needs a handgun. So, in April of 2008, the retired maintenance engineer agreed to serve as the lead plaintiff in a lawsuit challenging Chicago's 28-year-old handgun ban. Soon after, he walked into the Chicago Police Department and, as his attorneys had directed, applied for a .22-caliber Beretta pistol, setting the lawsuit into motion. When that case is argued before the U.S. Supreme Court on March 2, McDonald will become the public face of one of the most important Second Amendment cases in the nation's history.

Amid the clamor of the gun-rights debate, McDonald presents a strongly sympathetic figure: an elderly man who wants a gun to protect himself from the hoodlums preying upon his neighborhood. But the story of McDonald and his lawsuit is more complicated than its broad outlines might suggest. McDonald and three co-plaintiffs were carefully recruited by gun-rights groups attempting to shift the public perception of the Second Amendment as a white, rural Republican issue. McDonald, a Democrat and longtime hunter, jokes that he was chosen as lead plaintiff because he is African-American.

And no matter what the court — and the public — might make of his story or his case, legal experts say McDonald is poised to become an enduring symbol.

"Regardless of how this case goes, Mr. McDonald's name is set in legal history, at the same level as Roe v. Wade and Plessy v. Ferguson," said Nicholas Johnson, a law professor at Fordham University. "Schoolkids are going to recognize that in this case, something dramatic happened."

Just 19 months ago, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the Washington, D.C., handgun ban in a landmark ruling that the Second Amendment protects an individual's right to own a firearm for self-defense. That decision, in District of Columbia v. Heller, was a result of years of work by libertarian advocates who in 2001 had spotted an intriguing 5th Circuit Court of Appeals decision that they believed opened a crack in decades of legal precedent.

Since the early 1900s, federal courts and most state courts had agreed that the Second Amendment protected only a collective right to bear arms, which, at the time the Constitution was framed, was considered integral to maintaining militias. But the 5th Circuit decision in United States v. Emerson bucked that precedent, ruling that the amendment protected an individual right — to possess a gun in the home for self-defense, for example. As the libertarian advocates had hoped, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed in the Heller case, handing down a historic decision that energized the gun-rights movement. But because Washington is a federal district, the decision did not apply to states and other cities.

So, the battle shifted to Chicago, an obvious second front because the city's handgun ban was widely considered the strictest in the nation behind the Washington law. By early 2008, Alan Gura, the Virginia-based attorney who successfully argued the Heller case, had spread the word that he was looking for litigants in Chicago. Financed by the Second Amendment Foundation, a gun-rights group based in Bellevue, Wash., Gura interviewed about a dozen Chicagoans, first by phone and e-mail, and then in person.

His goal was to find a diverse group of individuals willing to represent the cause. "You want good people who can tell the story well and in a way that the public can connect with," Gura said.

He eventually settled on four people: Adam Orlov, a white, 40-year-old libertarian who lives in Old Town and is a partner in an equity options trading firm; David Lawson, a white, 44-year-old software engineer who lives in Irving Park and keeps a collection of old guns outside the city; Lawson's wife, Colleen, a multiracial 51-year-old hypnotherapist who became interested in Second Amendment issues after an attempted burglary at the couple's home in 2006; and McDonald.

From the start, it was clear that McDonald had the most compelling story to tell. The son of Louisiana sharecroppers, he was 17 years old when he borrowed $18 from his mother and set off for Chicago in 1951, becoming one of millions of African-Americans who moved North during the Great Migration. McDonald settled in the city's Morgan Park neighborhood, had eight children and spent his career working at the University of Chicago, where he started as a janitor, worked his way up to become a maintenance engineer, and retired in 1997.

He became interested in gun rights about 2005, when Mayor Richard Daley was pushing a statewide ban on assault weapons. Concerned that his shotgun might be outlawed under the proposed ban, McDonald attended several gun-rights rallies in Springfield, where he says he was one of the few people from Chicago and, he notes with a laugh, probably the only black person.

At the rallies, he caught the eye of a Valinda Rowe, a gun-rights activist who works for IllinoisCarry.com, a group that favors the legalization of concealed and open carrying of weapons. When Rowe heard that Gura was looking for Chicago plaintiffs, she passed along McDonald's phone number.

In April, Gura flew to Chicago to meet with the four potential plaintiffs. Sitting around a long conference table at a Schiller Park law office borrowed for the occasion, the group talked about the case and exchanged their personal stories. Toward the end of the meeting, Gura suggested that McDonald become the lead plaintiff, a move that would mean the case would be named McDonald v. City of Chicago.

"Why would you name it after me?" McDonald remembers asking. "Is it just because I'm the only black?"

He meant the question as a joke. Nevertheless, McDonald had identified an important issue. Gun ownership is most common among middle-age, middle-class, white men who live in suburban or rural areas, according to a 2008 survey by the University of Chicago's National Opinion Research Center.

But gun-rights advocates want to frame the issue more broadly. In preparation for the Heller case, attorneys interviewed two to three dozen people, looking for diversity in terms of race, sex, age and income.

"We wanted to be able to present the best face not just to the court but also to the media," said Robert A. Levy, a lawyer who plotted strategy in the Heller case and who is now the chairman of the libertarian Cato Institute. Plaintiffs had to have a clean criminal background and a plausible reason to want a firearm for self-defense, Levy said. "We didn't want some Montana militia man as the poster boy for the Second Amendment."

The strategy was partly inspired by the civil rights-era work of the NAACP and Thurgood Marshall, who challenged racial segregation in the 1940s and 1950s by searching for compelling plaintiffs and using the press to build public sympathy and support.

The NAACP's approach became the template for other reform movements, such as women's rights in the 1970s, and was taken up by a spectrum of activists, including conservative groups that have used it to challenge affirmative action, with moderate success.

In the Chicago case, constitutional law experts say McDonald likely was chosen for another important reason. Arguments in the case center on the 14th Amendment, which says that a state may not "abridge the privileges or immunities" of citizens.

The amendment was adopted after the Civil War to protect former slaves in states that were passing laws restricting their rights and prohibiting them from owning guns. In the Heller decision, Justice Antonin Scalia, writing for the majority, referred to that chapter in history, arguing that those who had opposed the disarmament of freedmen did so with the understanding that the Second Amendment protected an individual right to own a gun for self-defense.

That interpretation is central to the plaintiffs' arguments in the Chicago case.

Like the freed slaves, McDonald is a black person who, the thinking goes, has been disarmed. Having an African-American plaintiff challenge the Chicago handgun ban does not technically bolster the legal argument, says Adam Samaha, a law professor at the University of Chicago, but could provide a resonant symbol "because it helps us remember that history."

City attorneys say the details of the plaintiffs' lives have no bearing on the case.

"Although the particular parties to the case have their own story, the Supreme Court decides on legal issues only," said Benna Ruth Solomon, deputy corporation counsel for the city.

That may be true inside the marbled corridors of the U.S. Supreme Court, but the view is different from the two-story house in Morgan Park where Otis McDonald has lived for almost 40 years.

Photos of McDonald's children, smiling in their graduation caps and gowns, hang on the walls alongside portraits of Barack Obama and Bill and Hillary Clinton. A large Bible rests on the coffee table next to a crystal bowl of peppermints. And, sitting in the green wingback chair nearby, McDonald says the days he once spent tending to his three hunting beagles, speed-walking at the high school track and cooking catfish dinners are now increasingly devoted to fielding calls from reporters.

A national news crew from CBS recorded a segment at the house this fall, and CNN is scheduled to come by next week. As McDonald spoke, the phone rang again; a radio reporter was on the line. Poised and easygoing, he ran upstairs to take the call.

His wife of 52 years sighed.

"I'll be glad when this is over," said Laura McDonald, 74. Dressed in a green velour track suit, just back from her morning walk, she talked about her early worries that someone might try to hurt her husband because of his involvement with the case. But she too believes they have the right and the need to own a handgun.

"It used to be a real nice neighborhood, but now it's different," she said quietly. A petite woman with a big smile and an easy laugh, she described how old friends have moved away and how drug dealers have moved in.

The family's house was burglarized three times in the 1980s and early 1990s, Otis McDonald says. Five years ago, a teenager pulled out a gun and aimed at a fleeing car in the rear alley. Three days later, that teenager and two other young men surrounded McDonald's car and, according to a police report, threatened to "off" him. Last summer, according to a police report, someone broke into the garage.

McDonald says he has spotted drug deals in the back alley and watches with suspicion as flashy cars roll down the street. He disdains the young men who wear their "pants hanging off of their butts," and the people who blare their rap music and toss bottles on his lawn.

His wife wants to move, but McDonald refuses to be intimidated. Although he keeps two shotguns in the house, he says those weapons would be difficult to handle against an assailant.

"I would like to have a handgun so I could keep it right by my bed," he says, "just in case somebody might want to come in my house."

Shotguns have been stolen from his home before, but McDonald dismisses the suggestion that legalizing handguns would make it easier for weapons to fall into criminal hands. "They get all the guns they want anyway," he says.

Though his challenge to Chicago's handgun ban might be the most prominent lawsuit that McDonald has filed, it's not the first. Court records show that McDonald has filed six other cases since the late 1980s. He filed two unsuccessful work-related lawsuits, one in 1987 when he and several co-workers argued that a faulty air-filtration system at the University of Chicago left them exposed to harmful fumes, and another in 1988, claiming he had hurt his back lifting a heavy object. McDonald also sued the driver of a car who rear-ended him in 1990, in a case that was settled for an undisclosed amount. He filed several small-claims cases, including a successful claim against a mechanic for $200 in 1990, a successful claim for $1,000 against a tenant living in his daughter's house in 1993, and a current case, filed in 2009, against a roofer for $6,000.

He doesn't enjoy filing lawsuits, he says, but he'll do what is necessary to stand up for what he believes is right.

"I know there are some people out there who don't like what I'm doing," he said, "but you can't live in this world and be guided by what people think."

McDonald and his wife plan to travel to Washington in March to watch the historic oral arguments at the Supreme Court. Many legal experts predict that the court will strike down Chicago's handgun ban.

Even if that happens, no one expects a dramatic spike in the number of handguns in Chicago. Daley and the City Council most likely will replace the ban with tight regulations.

In the interim, McDonald keeps a close eye on his neighborhood. On a snowy evening last month, he trudged into the Morgan Park Police District headquarters for the regular community meeting, where he has been a fixture for more than two decades.

Bundled into a blue, zip-front sweatshirt, jeans and a gray scarf, he waved hello to several organizers, greeting everyone by name. He chatted with the representative from the alderman's office before settling into a chair to look over the list of recent crimes, marking those closest to his house.

Later, as people gathered their belongings to leave, McDonald looked around at the 16 other residents there and said he wished more would attend.

"You need the people in the community. They are there, they see and they know what's going on," he said. "Without them, you're out there in the wind."

Then, he wrapped his scarf around his neck and prepared to head home.

cmastony@tribune.com

Copyright © 2010, Chicago Tribune

[mawilson 2,133]

The Supreme Court will decide the legality of the city's handgun ban in McDonald v. City of Chicago. This is Otis McDonald.

Again? They already ruled the DC ban unconstitutional. How many times are they going to "decide"?

[john & jean 37]

when guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns!!!!!!!

[scandal 951]

Again? They already ruled the DC ban unconstitutional. How many times are they going to "decide"?

This question was addressed in the article. DC is a federal district so the Heller ruling did not apply to the states.

As the libertarian advocates had hoped, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed in the Heller case, handing down a historic decision that energized the gun-rights movement. But because Washington is a federal district, the decision did not apply to states and other cities.

So, the battle shifted to Chicago, an obvious second front because the city's handgun ban was widely considered the strictest in the nation behind the Washington law.

[Danno 1,228]

Scandal beat me to the punch... again Grrrrr

Edited January 31, 2010 by Danno

[scandal 951]

Scandal beat me to the punch... again Grrrrr

Sorry Danno. Better luck next time.

So perhaps you'd like to weigh in on the plan to use an elderly black working class Democrat as the poster child for this historic battle?

I, for one, think it's very savvy on the part of the gun rights lobby.

I also find it working persuasively on me. I consider myself to be generally in favor of restrictive gun control laws, and fear a wide repeal of them.

But if this guy can make a sympathetic case for why a handgun can really make him safer, I find myself prepared to consider it.

[luckytxn 2,265]

Sorry Danno. Better luck next time.

So perhaps you'd like to weigh in on the plan to use an elderly black working class Democrat as the poster child for this historic battle?

I, for one, think it's very savvy on the part of the gun rights lobby.

I also find it working persuasively on me. I consider myself to be generally in favor of restrictive gun control laws, and fear a wide repeal of them.

But if this guy can make a sympathetic case for why a handgun can really make him safer, I find myself prepared to consider it.

I also find it savvy of them. He I was sure was a very compelling person to choose also as he was going to have to be interviewed many times by many news outlets. He needed to be articulate and open to his life being gone over by a fine tooth comb.

[luckytxn 2,265]

Sorry Danno. Better luck next time.

So perhaps you'd like to weigh in on the plan to use an elderly black working class Democrat as the poster child for this historic battle?

I, for one, think it's very savvy on the part of the gun rights lobby.

I also find it working persuasively on me. I consider myself to be generally in favor of restrictive gun control laws, and fear a wide repeal of them.

But if this guy can make a sympathetic case for why a handgun can really make him safer, I find myself prepared to consider it.

I also find it savvy of them. He I was sure was a very compelling person to choose also as he was going to have to be interviewed many times by many news outlets. He needed to be articulate and open to his life being gone over by a fine tooth combbyhe anti gun lobby.

[Danno 1,228]

Sorry Danno. Better luck next time.

So perhaps you'd like to weigh in on the plan to use an elderly black working class Democrat as the poster child for this historic battle?

I, for one, think it's very savvy on the part of the gun rights lobby.

I also find it working persuasively on me. I consider myself to be generally in favor of restrictive gun control laws, and fear a wide repeal of them.

But if this guy can make a sympathetic case for why a handgun can really make him safer, I find myself prepared to consider it.

I would guess this is SOP for decades now, even in the most famous of cases.

"Roe" of Roe-v-Wade, never even got an abortion.

Rosa Parks, was she really this tired domestic who suddenly took a Stand at the inequality on the Bus?.. yes but she was also long time worker for civil Rights groups and the move to defy the segregation was well planned. Seems I had read in one account they had another young lady picked but she became pregnant and as she was unmarried it was decided not to use her.

This Black gentleman is, or so it seems, is a legit shotgun owner who lives in a high crime area and wants a Handgun. He actually is 4-real. It's unfortunate that we look to consider Color or Race more now than ever in nearly every public act that takes place... and this is no exception and it's practice will not diminish in my opinion.

[mawilson 2,133]

This question was addressed in the article. DC is a federal district so the Heller ruling did not apply to the states.

Well I hope they repeal the ban once and for all. 2nd Amendment FTW!

[scandal 951]

This Black gentleman is, or so it seems, is a legit shotgun owner who lives in a high crime area and wants a Handgun. He actually is 4-real. It's unfortunate that we look to consider Color or Race more now than ever in nearly every public act that takes place... and this is no exception and it's practice will not diminish in my opinion.

I agree that Mr. McDonald appears a legitimate and sympathetic petitioner for this case. Kudos to him for taking it on.

As to the 'race' card - if it's being played here, I suppose that's no different than it being played elsewhere on the American political scene. Race is still a factor in our public life whether we admit it or not.

[scandal 951]

http://www.chicagoguncase.com/about-us/meet-the-plaintiffs/

Meet the Plaintiffs

Published by Mark Taff

Otis McDonald

Mr. McDonald is a retired maintenance engineer who worked at the University of Chicago and has been a Chicago resident since 1952. In the 1960s, this Army veteran, who served in Germany and came home to raise a family in Chicago, was a pioneer in integrating his local union, rising through the ranks until he became head of his union local.

In addition to being a civil rights and union leader in the Chicago area, Mr. McDonald is also a community activist who has been threatened for his efforts to rid his neighborhood of drug dealers and other criminals. He owns a handgun, but cannot keep it inside the city because of the handgun ban.

“This lawsuit, I hope, will allow me to bring my handgun into the city legally,” he said. “I only want a handgun in my house for my protection.”

Adam Orlov

A former Evanston, Illinois police officer, Mr. Orlov, 38, left that job and went to business school. He now runs a trading business in Chicago, dealing in stocks and other securities.

Mr. Orlov believes that the Chicago handgun ban violates his constitutional right to have a handgun for his personal protection at home. Removing the ban would not only allow him to be more secure in his home, but also help his neighbors be safer from criminals. He says the Chicago handgun ban is “onerous.”

Colleen and David Lawson

This husband-and-wife have a home in the city that has been targeted by burglars. David has been a Chicago resident for more than 25 years and is a software engineer who works away from home several days a week, while Chicago native Colleen is a hypnotherapist working in the city.

David was working out of town one afternoon when Colleen was home alone during an attempted home invasion. She came face-to-face with three men trying to break in through the rear sliding doors. It took more than a half-hour for police to respond. At least two more attempts occurred following the first: the third coming just minutes after police left her home. Colleen said when officers finally arrived, “Each time, they came and basically just said there was nothing they could do.”

The Lawsons believe they represent many of their friends and neighbors who want a handgun for protection, or perhaps have one that cannot be registered within the city limits.

Second Amendment Foundation

The Second Amendment Foundation (www.saf.org) is the nations oldest and largest tax-exempt education, research, publishing and legal action group focusing on the Constitutional right and heritage to privately own and possess firearms. Founded in 1974, The Foundation has grown to more than 600,000 members and supporters and conducts many programs designed to better inform the public about the consequences of gun control. SAF has previously funded successful firearms-related suits against the cities of Los Angeles; New Orleans; New Haven, CT; and San Francisco on behalf of American gun owners, a lawsuit against the cities suing gun makers and an amicus brief and fund for the Emerson case holding the Second Amendment as an individual right.

Illinois State Rifle Association

The Illinois State Rifle Association (www.isra.org) was officially formed on June 3, 1903 to train civilians in marksmanship skills, thus preparing them for the National Guard, the U.S. military or as a better trained element of the “irregular militia.” Since that time, they have trained thousands of marksmen who have answered the call.

The mission of the Illinois State Rifle Association has not changed – only the challenges have become more taxing. The most troubling though are our domestic adversaries – they want to disarm the civilians of Illinois and to prevent us from shooting, hunting, collecting, or even owning a firearm.

The Illinois State Rifle Association works to promote and defend the individual Second Amendment rights of Illinoians.

[scandal 951]

A story in my daily paper. It reminded me of Otis McDonald.

I can feel for this man, Mayfield. A drug dealer threatens him and comes between him and his children. The drug dealer winds up dead from a bullet. On the one hand, it surely be seen as self defense. On the other hand, if he wasn't carrying a weapon, what would have been the likely outcome of this incident? Would anyone have died? Or would they all just have gone about their business?

My own gut feeling is that the more guns you have out there - whether legal or illegal - the more people are going to use them, and the more people will die. Less guns - less firearms incidents. It's as simple as that. Only it's not. I really DO feel for this man, trying to raise young daughters in a shitty neighborhood infested with drug pushers. On the one hand. And on the other hand.

Edit: Elliot Mayfield is African-American. Not that it matters to the principles or issues involved. But since I'm bringing it up in the context of Otis McDonald, I thought it was relevant to point out.

Man charged in murder acted to defend children, family says

Shooting victim had tried to accost suspect's daughter, relatives say

By Matthew Walberg, Tribune reporter

February 9, 2010

The family of a former drug counselor charged with first-degree murder said Tuesday that he acted in defense of his children after the shooting victim had tried to sell him drugs and accosted his teenage daughter.

Elliot Mayfield, 51, was waiting for a bus with his two daughters — 15 and 11 — and their friend Sunday night at 6114 S. King Drive when he shot Samuel Fullilove, 33, in the chest.

After a 1990 drug-related conviction, relatives said, Mayfield spent the last two decades trying to help others beat substance abuse and kept a gun for protection because crime was so bad in his Woodlawn neighborhood.

"We feel like Elliot did everything he needed to do to try to walk away from the situation, but he thought that the guy was going to hurt his girls," said a man who identified himself as Mayfield's nephew but declined to give his name.

According to police, Mayfield rebuffed Fullilove's efforts to sell him drugs. Fullilove allegedly taunted Mayfield and then swung at him several times but missed, they said.

Fullilove then jumped in front of the older daughter and began to chase Mayfield, according to the police report. The daughter screamed, "Leave my daddy alone."

Mayfield told police he pulled out a handgun and placed the weapon to Fullilove's cheek. When the victim rushed at him, Fullilove fired once, police said.

Court records show that Fullilove had an extensive history of misdemeanor arrests for crimes including domestic battery, resisting arrest and possession of cannabis.

Edited February 11, 2010 by scandal

[SMR 368]

when guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns!!!!!!!

By definition. If you have a gun, you would be an outlaw, even if you had never broken the law and had no intention to use the gun for anything but self-defense.

[one...two...tree 2,762]

Interesting read, Ron.

My hunch is that the Supreme Court will rule any outright ban as unconstitutional, which I would agree. However, Chicago will be able to restrict where and when someone can carry a handgun.

This part though doesn't make sense to me...

Three days later, that teenager and two other young men surrounded McDonald's car and, according to a police report, threatened to "off" him. Last summer, according to a police report, someone broke into the garage.

McDonald says he has spotted drug deals in the back alley and watches with suspicion as flashy cars roll down the street. He disdains the young men who wear their "pants hanging off of their butts," and the people who blare their rap music and toss bottles on his lawn.

In the first paragraph, how did he scare those teenagers away? By flashing his gun back at them? That's where gun advocates and I part ways. They make silly arguments that somehow, having a gun in your possession will make life for you safer. If a group of teenagers with guns surround your car and want to 'off' you, you're pretty much fvcked already. Many gun advocates have this fantasy that the presence of a gun demands respect from those who might try to harm you. Tell that to anyone who's been around gang violence. Ask them if flashing your gun deters someone from shooting at you? Having everyone possess guns on the streets will not solve the violence, it will exacerbate it.

Edited February 11, 2010 by Galt's gallstones