Court gun ruling was truly needed

Well, the Supreme Court has done it again. This time they've made a 5-4 split decision on a Second Amendment case.

It's quite distressing that there were four dissenting votes, but that is a story for another time.

When the court majority affirmed citizens' personal rights to possess a hand gun, Chicago's often well-intentioned Mayor Daley went ballistic with his criticism of the decision.

If it wasn't so sad, we'd merely say that the mayor was misguided.

The fact is that since 1982 handgunsˆ  have, effectively, been banned in Chicago.

Yet pick up the paper on any given day and we can all see that today'sˆ  Chicago is a veritable shooting gallery in which many people are killed by gunshot wounds on an almost daily basis.

So it would seem that the ban simply hasn't worked.

At the moment:ˆ  the bad guys have guns;ˆ  the police cannot protect citizens from the bad guys with the guns and the mayor can't protect his citizens but he cynically has made sure that law-abiding citizens could not legally own handguns to protect themselves.

Now, the court decision will make it possible for law-abiding citizens to own (and hopefully carry) handguns to protect themselves in the future.

Unlike the blustering mayor, we don't have the tax-payer-paid-for bodyguards that he does, so I think we have the right to hold a view of this matter that is different from his.

Any citizen of age who passes a psychological screen, takes weapons training and has no felony convictions should be allowed to own and carry a handgun if he or she wishes to do so.

Illinois is now among the minority of states that denies this right to its citizens.

In the states where concealed-carry is permitted, shootings are far fewer than they are on any given weekend in Chicago.

Charles F. Falk

Schaumburg