Delaware Supreme Court: Right to Bear Arms for Self-Defense Can't Be Infringed Just Because You Live in Public Housing

Actually, they even went further than the headline suggests.

Previously, they had completely banned guns in public housing. But this was challenged by lawsuit in 2010, and the housing commission rewrote its complete ban, making it instead a ban on carrying a gun in hallways, laundry rooms, and other common areas.

But the Delaware Supreme Court has now struck that as unconstitutional, given the new (old) understanding of the Second Amendment post-McDonald. So you can now carry your weapon to the laundry room. Which, frankly, seems like a good idea, because attacks outside your actual apartment are likely to occur in such isolated areas.

And they did so unanimously.

Actually, they merely mentioned the McDonald decision, while chiefly justifying the decision on... Delaware's own constitution, which guarantees the right to keep and bear arms.

Check out Cooke's post for more and links.

Cooke has another important gun story: A review has found the Navy Yard shooting was indeed preventable. But not by gun control.

The report notes that the shooter had been observed acting erratically, but that no one reported this to anyone in a position of authority. Had people been more alert to Lunatic Control, the shooter's permissions would have been revoked, and he couldn't have gotten into the Naval Yards.

This suggests something to me -- I keep seeing the gun-liberals (gun liberalizers, I mean; I use the term for its shock value) saying things that turn out to be right, and the gun-reactionaries keep saying things that turn out to be wrong.

One begins to notice.

I myself have the subconscious coding of a gun reactionary. If you've detected I'm quick to buy into various tropes promoted by the gun reactionaries, you're right. I don't come from a gun-liberal culture, but more from a gun-reactionary one (or, gun-neutral, leaning gun-reactionary). So my instincts do indeed lead, at first, to the gun-reactionary side.

It's actually reason that pushes me over to the gun-liberal side, while fear and primitive programming and tribal mores make me a bit of a gun-reactionary.

When I first read about the Delaware case, my gun-reactionary instinct flared up, and I worried that the liberalization of gun rules within public housing would lead to more crime. You know, the "Wild West" scenario that the gun-reactionaries are always nattering about, but which never seems to actually manifest.

But my gun-reactionary instinct has subsided a bit now, and my learned gun-liberal response is now urging a wait-and-see attitude. After all, anyone who wants a gun for criminal purposes -- anyone whose economic survival relies upon carrying an illegal gun -- already has one. It's just the non-criminals who are disarmed in this circumstances.

And they are forced by circumstance to live in close proximity to those illegally armed.

As I said, while my gut is gun-reactionary, my head has been persuaded by evidence that the gun-liberals are usually right. So I'll just watch on this one, and see if that pattern continues to hold.

posted by Ace at 02:15 PM

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