Breaking News from the NRA:
NRA Wins Big in California State Court of Appeals
The California State Court of Appeals announced today their decision to overturn one of the most restrictive gun bans in the country, following a legal battle by attorneys for the National Rifle Association (NRA) and a previous court order against the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.
“Today’s decision by the California State Court of Appeals is a big win for the law-abiding citizens and NRA Members of San Francisco,” declared Chris W. Cox, NRA’s chief lobbyist.
In 2005, NRA sought an injunction against the San Francisco Board of Supervisors to prevent them from enacting one of the nation’s most restrictive gun bans. NRA won the injunction, but the City’s mayor and Board of Supervisors ignored the court order and approved a set of penalties, including a $1,000 fine and a jail term of between 90 days and six months, for city residents who own firearms for lawful purposes in their own homes.
“We promised our California NRA members in 2005 that we would fight any gun ban instituted by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, and we haven’t given up that fight,” continued Cox. “Today we see our second win for the Second Amendment against the San Francisco gun ban. We beat them once in court and the City’s attorney appealed based on his personal disagreement with the court’s first decision to overturn the ban. Now we’ve beaten them again. The California State Court of Appeals has upheld the state preemption law.”
Today’s decision came in the form of a 3-0 opinion in favor of the lower court ruling overturning the gun ban.
“This decision is a thoughtful and well-reasoned legal opinion,” concluded Cox. “I’d like to thank our approximately 4 million members, including the hundreds of thousands of members in California, for their continued commitment to protecting our cherished freedoms.”
Let’s hope that SCOTUS will follow suit in the D.C. Gun Case.
In general, lawful gun ownership is a pretty simple matter. The Founders established gun-owner rights so that citizens would possess and be able to exercise the universal right of self-defense. Guns enable their owners to protect themselves from robbery and assault more successfully and more safely than they otherwise would be able to. The danger of laws like the D.C. handgun ban is that they limit the availability of legal guns to people who want to use them for legitimate reasons, such as self-defense (let alone hunting, sport shooting, collecting), while doing nothing to prevent criminals from acquiring guns.
“The second amendment gives the individual citizen a means of protection against the despotism of the state. Look what it refers to: “The security of a free state.” The word “free” should be underlined because that is what they are talking about and that is what the Constitution is about–a free nation and a free people, where the rights of the individual are preeminent. The founding fathers had seen, as the Declaration of Independence tells us, what a despotic government can do to its own people. Indeed, every American should read the Declaration of Independence before he reads the Constitution, and he will see that the Constitution aims at preventing a recurrence of the way George III’s government treated the colonies.” 
At Virginia Tech last spring, 32 people were gunned down in a gun-free zone. At Columbine High School in 1999, 13 innocent people were killed. In a Killeen, Texas, café in 1991, 23 died at the hands of a gunman run amok. And in a Southern California McDonalds restaurant in 1984, 21 lost their lives when a shooter went berserk. These are just a few of the shooting incidents around the world, all enabled by the same failure: there was no way to stop those responsible for perpetrating the killings.
“The gun has been called the great equalizer, meaning that a small person with a gun is equal to a large person, but it is a great equalizer in another way, too. It insures that the people are the equal of their government whenever that government forgets that it is servant and not master of the governed. When the British forgot that they got a revolution. And, as a result, we Americans got a Constitution; a Constitution that, as those who wrote it were determined, would keep men free. If we give up part of that Constitution we give up part of our freedom and increase the chance that we will lose it all. I am not ready to take that risk. I believe that the right of the citizen to keep and bear arms must not be infringed if liberty in America is to survive.” — Ronald Reagan