Wednesday, May 18, 2016

"What poppycock!"

That's one of four exclamation points in Judge Leon's opinion striking DC's concealed carry regulations.  Here's the NY Times article:

Finding that the District of Columbia’s strict gun law is probably unconstitutional, a federal judge ruled Tuesday that, while a challenge to the law is pending, district police must stop requiring applicants to have a “good reason” for seeking a permit to carry a gun on the street.
Judge Richard J. Leon’s 46-page ruling in United States District Court in Washington reopens the district’s long fight over how much room the Second Amendment’s guarantee of the right to bear arms leaves for local regulation — and whether it applies only to firearms in the home, or to guns carried outside as well.
The law gave the police the discretion to grant concealed-carry licenses only to those with “good reason to fear injury” or other specific reasons, such as having a job in which they carried large amounts of cash or valuables.
All citizens have a constitutional right to keep firearms in their homes for self-defense, the United States Supreme Court ruled in 2008 in District of Columbia v. Heller.
Referring to that ruling, Judge Leon wrote, “The district’s understandable, but overly zealous, desire to restrict the right to carry in public a firearm for self-defense to the smallest possible number of law-abiding, responsible citizens is exactly the type of policy choice the justices had in mind.”

Meantime, the poll from yesterday has about 100 votes, with only 10% saying the mural should be taken down. The other 90% is split between options 2 and 3, saying that it should be left up. Interestingly, many people think the mural contains demeaning images that can be viewed as racist but that it should be left up as historical (option 3).

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

HOW is it racist? Please have somebody articulate how it is racist: "having or showing the belief that a particular race is superior to another."

I get that it depicts minorities in labor positions (next to Whites), and the only authority figures are White. But does that make it more racist than a photograph from the civil war showing slavery? Is it a historical depiction of how things were perceived, or, is it a statement of a "belief" of how things should be. Yes, I think it would have been better if George Washington Carver or Dr. William B. Sawyer were in it, but I am not sure that the depictions were intended to demean or were aspirational.

If it is historical and not racist, the real question is whether it is appropriate for the setting that it was in. But even more difficult, now that the courtroom is no longer an active courtroom, isn't the entire set up worthy of preservation to show how justice was dispensed in Miami - even if it was with little regard for the feelings of minorities?