"Otis McDonald, 76, who is suing the city over its gun ban, says he keeps a 20-gauge shotgun at home to protect himself from gangs that plague his Morgan Park neighborhood".  Does this seem like a good idea and is he protected under the Bill of Rights?  According to the Chicago Tribune McDonald says, "The people that want to control me, my family, my property, these are the people that I want to protect myself from," He goes on to say, "The same children who used to play basketball in my backyard now threaten his life".

Otis McDonald is a classic example of the Forgotten Man whose rights have been trampled by those who think they know better, in this case groups like the Brady Center.  As the Weekly Standard reports, "He came to Chicago from Louisiana when he was 17, as part of the Great Migration of blacks. He worked his way up from a janitor to a maintenance engineer, a good job that allowed him and his wife to buy a house on the city's far South Side in 1972, where they raised their family.  In recent years, McDonald, now a grandfather, has watched the neighborhood deteriorate, the quiet nights he once enjoyed replaced by the sound of gunfire, drunken fights and shattering liquor bottles.  Three times, he says, his house has been broken into — once the front door was wide open and the burglars still out front when his wife and daughter came home from church. A few years ago, he called police to report gunfire, only to be confronted by a man who told him he'd heard about that call and threatened to kill him.  I just got the feeling that I'm on my own," said McDonald. "The fact is that so many people my age have worked hard all their life, getting a nice place for themselves to live in ... and having one (handgun) would make us feel a lot more comfortable".

It seems strange that after 200 years, we are still debating the fundamental issue to protect yourself, but here it is again before the Supreme Court.  As this Washington Times editorial points out, murder rates plummeted in the District of Columbia after the Supreme Court struck down their handgun ban last year and in fact Chicago's murder rate has exceeded the average rate in other cities in nearly every year since they enacted their ban in 1982.  The editors sum it up all up by writing, "In general, gun-control laws disarm law-abiding citizens - not criminals who don't care about the law. The lesson is that freedom and safety go hand in hand."  This seems like plain old common sense to the Forgotten Man who believes that you can't legislate against bad behavior by taking away fundamental rights of our citizens.