Barely a week after the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in McDonald v. City of Chicago, NRA is supporting a new lawsuit -- Benson v. City of Chicago -- to enforce the court's decision. The suit, filed on July 6 against the city and its mayor, Richard Daley, is the first to challenge the city's new gun control ordinance passed on July 2 (please see related story from last week's Grassroots Alert here).
Just four days after the Court struck down the nearly 30 year-long handgun bans in the cities of Chicago and Oak Park, Chicago enacted one of the most restrictive anti-gun ordinances in the United States. Commenting on the scope of the new ordinance, Corporation Counsel Mara Georges, the top attorney for the city, said, "We've gone farther than anyone else ever has."
The city's so-called "Responsible Gun Ownership Ordinance" provisions include: a ban on all gun sales in the city; a ban on possession of firearms for self-defense outside the "home" -- even on a patio or in an attached garage; a ban on having more than one assembled and operable firearm in the home; a provision that allows the Chicago police to arbitrarily ban "unsafe" handguns based on unlimited criteria; and a training requirement to obtain a Chicago Firearm Permit. (However, range training would be impossible since it will now be unlawful to operate a shooting range within city limits.)
