Early Fallout from Heller

The Supreme Court decided last week in D.C. v. Heller that the Second Amendment guarantees an individual right to own firearms. That decision is already being cited in lower court cases:

General Sessions Court Judge Bob Moon said Friday that crime in Chattanooga "has become so rampant that it is no longer possible for the police department to protect our citizens."

He told a woman who had been pulled from her car and beaten in the head that she or her mother needed to "purchase a weapon, obtain a gun permit and learn to protect yourself." The woman moved back in with her mother after the May 4 incident on E. 17th Street.

Judge Moon said, "The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that all citizens have a right to purchase a weapon to defend themselves, their families and their homes - unless there is some disqualification that prevents them from owning a weapon."

Of course, it was never possible for the police to fully protect citizens, an argument that we have been making for years. It's always great to hear a representative of the government advise citizens to arm themselves; that is the hallmark of a free country.

Further fallout has descended on the suburbs of Chicago (which has one of the most restrictive handgun policies in the nation):

The First Dominos Fall: Morton Grove and Wilmette Handgun Bans After the D.C. city council banned handguns in 1976, and the voters of Massachusetts overwhelmingly rejected a handgun ban initiative that same year, the next U.S. jurisdiction to enact a handgun ban was the Chicago suburb of Morton Grove, in 1981. Chicago did the same in 1982, and four other Chicago suburbs, including Wilmette, later followed suit.

The Mayor of Morton Grove has announced that he will propose repeal of the handgun ban. [...] Wilmette, meanwhile, has suspended enforcement of its handgun ban.

(Via: Instapundit. More on on DC v. Heller, here.)

Possible School Choice Progress in CA

From Edspresso comes this partly encouraging report:

[...]

Currently, low-income Hispanic students in Florida outperform average California students on the 4th grade NAEP reading assessment, conducted in English. This in spite of the fact that California per-pupil funding is $2,300 more than Florida's, and California median household income is nearly $12,000 higher.

Such comparisons make it difficult to defend California's public schooling monopoly-especially since not one doomsday scenario predicted by status-quo apologists has ever materialized in any state with parental choice programs. Education monopolists are still repeating their tired myths, but fewer California lawmakers are buying them.

Thanks to a handful of State Assembly members, a record-setting five parental choice bills are being introduced this legislative session. This is the first time in five years that any such legislation has been introduced in the Golden State, and California leads the nation with five parental choice bills introduced this year, only recently joined by Virginia.

The proposed measures would free California children from unsafe schools (Assembly Bill 2361, authored by Rick Keene, R-Chico) and failing schools (AB2739, Alan Nakanishi, R-Lodi, and AB2561, Roger Niello, R-Fair Oaks). Other proposed laws would also provide parents of private school students with tax credits (AB2605, Nakanishi), and allow parents of special-needs children to choose another school (AB2290, John J. Benoit, R-Riverside) without having to hire an attorney or jump through protracted bureaucratic hoops.

[...]

I say partly encouraging because none of the proposals involves vouchers for lower-income families. Two of the bills involve tax-credits (AB2561 and AB2605) which are a step in the right direction but only really benefit people who make enough income to pay substantial taxes. The other three bills make it easier to choose another school but do not provide funding. In the short term these sorts of bills will probably not do much to help the students most in need and that fact will be used by opponents to block further attampts at school choice, as they have done in the past with other similar proposals.

Still, it has been many years since this topic has been a live issue in California politics and if the authors are correct that this represents a trend, I am all for it.

Read the whole article to find some encouraging comments about successful programs elsewhere, especially in Georgia.