Handgun Ban Plaintiff Urges Gun Rights in Crime-Ridden Neighborhoods

Otis McDonald, lead plaintiff in the case challenging the constitutionality of the City of Chicago’s handgun ban, has taken on challenges his entire life. And at the age of 76, he’s not done yet.

The lawsuit seeks a judgment declaring that a Chicago ordinance effectively banning handgun ownership is unconstitutional under the Constitution’s Second Amendment and enjoining its enforcement. The Federal District Court in Chicago dismissed the case, as did the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Both rulings were on technical legal grounds, however, not going to the merits of constitutionality.

On September 30 the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to review the Seventh Circuit decision.

The Supreme Court in 2008 found a federal law banning handgun possession in the District of Columbia was barred by the Second Amendment, but the decision left open the issue of whether state and local gun ban laws were likewise unconstitutional. The Chicago case directly presents the Court with that issue. Briefing is now underway. The Heartland Institute will be filing an amicus brief, urging the Court to overturn the Chicago gun ban. A decision is expected before next June.

Whatever the outcome, McDonald will go down in history in this case, the subject of massive nationwide attention from both proponents and opponents of gun control, if only because it will forever be known as McDonald v. City of Chicago.

McDonald “resides in a high-crime neighborhood and is active in community affairs,” the complaint in the case alleges. “As a consequence of trying to make his neighborhood a better place to live, Mr. McDonald has been threatened by drug dealers.”

McDonald owns a handgun, the complaint alleges, but keeps it outside of the city. He would like to possess the gun “within his home for self-defense, but is prevented from doing so” by enforcement of the city ordinance.

In an exclusive interview with The Heartland Institute, McDonald explained why he believes he needs--and is entitled--to possess a handgun within the confines of his home.

“Where I live [on Chicago’s South Side], I’m always concerned about the neighborhood,” he said. “I’ve lived here 30 some years, and I like it here, and I wanted to keep it clean, keep it protected, and keep the property value up.”

McDonald is particularly concerned--and threatened--by young gangbangers and drug dealers in his neighborhood.

“I’m concerned heavily about the kids, about the real young kids coming up in this environment, because they are being trained to be what the older ones are,” he said. “They’re recruited daily, nightly, to be drug dealers and gangbangers.

“I think the kids are angry because they haven’t been given [a good] upbringing; they haven’t been taught how to survive. I was brought up down in the country. We had to work. Honesty was just a normal thing,” he continued.

“Now it [honesty] is not normal. The kids only know about how to get money for drugs, money for food, in the best way they can. And they haven’t gone to school. They haven’t had anyone teaching them honesty is the only way,” he said.

“They’re only seeing the dark side,” he continued. “They’re brought up in the dark side, and they’re seeing so many kids with big cars and plenty of money. This is the only life, in their eyes. That’s what they’re learning. They have no respect for themselves. Therefore, you know they have no respect for police officers and certainly not the elderly people in the neighborhood.

“Everybody’s got to figure out something that will make a little bit of a difference and put it all together and maybe we can make a measurable bit of difference,” he said.

McDonald is involved with the Chicago Alternative Policing Strategies (CAPS) program, which is designed to bring communities in touch with police to mobilize joint efforts on crime and community problems. “I have been going to CAPS meetings for years,” McDonald said, “where the policemen and the community come together and try to resolve problems and where police officers get to know the residents and the residents get to know the police officers.”

He wishes more residents of his community would get involved in CAPS, but “they’re afraid and they have reasons to be afraid. Being out there and being confronted a few times, I know these kids; they’re dangerous. They don’t care about living, they have no respect for their elders, police officers.

“But the police can’t do it alone,” he added. “There are too many guns in here and they’re coming in here too fast. They need the community to have the right to a handgun in their own home. I believe to my heart that will help the police out, [protecting people] from home robbery, burglary.”

That’s why McDonald agreed to get involved in the Chicago case.

“I will not be pinned down in my house without anything to defend myself, while they walk the streets,” he said. “I will not be victimized by the law that tells me I cannot have a handgun in my own home, when I know there’s a right that’s out there that’s given to me. The people out there on the streets don’t have the right to have a gun out there on the streets. But we law-abiding citizens--senior citizens, I may stress--have the constitutional right under the Second Amendment. It will make the residents, old people like myself, feel a little more secure.

“Every citizen that’s been working all their life and struggled to get a little something wants to live in their home peacefully in their older years,” he added. “They shouldn’t have to do this with fear all day, all night, waking up all times of night, with all that’s going on, and hope the [criminals] don’t come into their house. This is no kind of life to be living.”

This case is not the first time McDonald has taken on controversial issues. Born in Alabama, McDonald came to Chicago when he was 16. He worked menial jobs at the Chicago stockyards and a fish market, among others. “Nothing meaningful,” he said. He volunteered for the Army as a way to go to school.

In 1964 he began working at the University of Chicago as a custodian. That job and food service were the only employment open to blacks then, he says. But that didn’t stop him. He kept applying for apprentice maintenance engineering positions, which are union jobs, and kept getting turned down. His applications were controversial on campus both among other blacks and the white management.

Finally, one of the managers gave him the job, on the condition that he go to school. He went to Coynes Electrical Institute and eventually got his associate degree in applied science from Kennedy King College, both in Chicago. He went on to head Local 321 of the Service Employees International Union. He retired in 1997.

Several years ago, McDonald went to an Illinois Rifle Association rally in Springfield, Illinois. One thing led to another, and he wound up as the named plaintiff in the litigation.

“I have no desire to call the innocent citizens out to war or anything like that,” he said. “But if [through the lawsuit] I can deter one or two burglars from going into somebody’s house, with the idea that they think that the person has got a gun in there, because of the fact that this person has a right to have a gun in there, that will be worth the effort.”

Attorney Maureen Martin (mmartin@heartland.org) is a senior fellow of The Heartland Institute.