By Peggy Tartaro,
Executive Editor

To the casual observer, 2009 might have seemed like a quiet year for gunowners, especially after the dramas of 2008.

But, as in most years, there is a lot going on-it just depends on how closely you pay attention.

A year ago at this time I was writing about the year "just" past-2008-and the Heller victory in the Supreme Court, Barack Obama's presidential victory and the Democratic Party's surge in both the House and Senate. I also mentioned that gunowners were spending freely, especially on ammunition and AR-style rifles.

I used "just" in quotation marks, because when I wrote in the January/February 2009 issue about the year past, it wasn't quite over.

The same is true this year; the process of magazine production requires a bit of a head start. While it is colder and we've had our first snow here, the year has a solid three weeks to go. And if 21 years at Women & Guns and a few more at Gun Week have taught me nothing else, it's that things can happen fast, and unexpectedly.

So, while Dave Workman did yeoman work putting together the year in review news story, the final line has yet to be written.

And, while 2009 was quieter for gunowners, it did have some notable action.
It wasn't until September that the Supreme Court decided to take the case captioned McDonald v. Chicago, even though the McDonald case was filed the day after the Heller decision was handed down in 2008.

McDonald is a suit by the Second Amendment Foundation (parent of this magazine), the Illinois State Rifle Association and four individual Chicago residents, that seeks to overturn that city's onerous gun laws, thought to be the most draconian after Washington, DC's pre-Heller law.

While there is a new face on the Supreme Court this year-Sonia Sotomayor, Pres. Obama's first Supreme Court appointment-the philosophical and judicial make up of the Court does not appear to have changed much since Heller.

Sotomayor replaces David Souter, who voted in the minority in Heller, and thus against gunowners. During her nomination hearings, Sotomayor bobbed and weaved sufficiently on the 2nd Amendment to satisfy enough avowed pro-gunners in the Senate to approve her confirmation. To most close observers, her record on gun rights does not look good, but people have a history of change once installed for life on the Court.

We'll see in March when oral arguments on the case will be heard. Alan Gura, who represented Dick Antony Heller et al in that case, will be the lead attorney again in McDonald.

Unless something changes in the next few months, we'll have to gather 'round a radio to hear the McDonald arguments rather than see them.

It's a seemingly quaint quirk of the Supreme Court that arguments are indeed heard, and not seen, unless you are lucky enough to be a ticketed guest or even luckier in getting one of the very few public seats.

The rest of us make do, with a few modern embellishments, such as visuals of which justice is speaking on C-SPAN or your computer, with only the sounds of the questions by the justices and the answers by counsel.

In this day and age, it is a refreshing experience to concentrate that hard on anything without a dozen electronic distractions, without extra graphics and text crawls and without "re-enactments" and theme music.

However things go in McDonald, it will be just one more step in a long, long process.

For gunowners it is a step back to where, as the Beatles sang, "we once belonged." Back to the Founders' ideas and ideals about what citizenship is and what rights are "inalienable" and "self-evident."

If you don't live in Washington or Chicago, both the Heller and now the McDonald cases may seem remote and inconsequential. But just as the Heller decision has already affected gunowners in other states, a pro-gun victory in McDonald would impact all gunowners positively.

When W&G got started back in 1989, it was nearly inconceivable than 21 years later all but two states (Illinois and Wisconsin) would have some provision for concealed carry and that the majority (37) have right to carry laws-laws which require a permit to be issued unless there is a compelling legal reason not to.

The tide changed on concealed carry. But like most changes, it happened slowly, one step at a time, with an eye on the future and an appreciation of the past.

Peggy Tartaro

Photo © Copyright 1998 Nancy Floyd, used with permission.