PublicNuisanceWire.com

Now that the United States Supreme Court has agreed to hear arguments in the case of McDonald v. Chicago, the Second Amendment is back in the spotlight. Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray, who will join arguments in the case, believes that the people's Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms is fundamental and cannot be denied by state and local governments. He outlined his perspective in an exclusive interview with Public Nuisance Wire.

PNW: The Second Amendment has become a hot topic of late. Why do you think this is?

Cordray: I think Americans have always valued their rights under the Second Amendment and want to ensure that these rights are not unduly restricted by government. 

PNW: What are your views about the right to keep and bear arms?

Cordray: I have always admired Abraham Lincoln, and he believed strongly, and I agree, that the rights provided and recognized in our Constitution were not just created there, but are reflective of rights provided in the Declaration of Independence. And they include the rights derived from self-preservation, the right to security, and the right to pursue happiness. And those are, to me, the tenets that inform the constitutional rights which we all work to uphold. I believe that the Second Amendment affords Americans an individual right to keep and bear arms, which involves the right of self-preservation and the right to security in the home and for your family.

PNW: Why was it important that the Supreme Court hear McDonald v. Chicago?

Cordray: It was important for the United States Supreme Court to hear McDonald v. Chicago, because the case involves one of our most fundamental constitutional rights and whether that right will be given full meaning to all Americans, in light of the Court's landmark decision last year in District of Columbia v. Heller. Until now, the Court has only interpreted the Second Amendment to protect an individual's right to keep and bear arms against undue interference from the federal government. In McDonald, the Court will decide whether the Second Amendment is incorporated into the Fourteenth Amendment so as to also apply to the states, protecting citizens from undue gun restrictions imposed by state and local governments. 

PNW: What would be the ideal outcome of this case?

Cordray: I think that the Court should hold that the Second Amendment is incorporated through the Fourteenth Amendment against the states. I hope that citizens take from such a ruling a sense of security that their Second Amendment rights cannot be restricted unduly by either federal, state, or local government.