title:  Another Win For The NRA: Court Rules That Cities Can’t Protect Themselves From Gun Violence
text: If you ve ever thought our government is completely run by the National Rifle Association, your mind won t be changed by this article.A federal appeals court in San Francisco ruled on Monday that any laws that cities or states pass to protect their citizens from gun violence are unconstitutional.The case was about three business partners in Alameda, California, who wanted to open a gun store, but they were denied a zoning permit. The court ruled in the partners  favor, saying that the right to bear arms meant the right to buy arms. If  the right of the people to keep and bear arms  is to have any force, the people must have a right to acquire the very firearms they are entitled to keep and to bear,  wrote Judge Diarmuid F. O Scannlain (a Reagan appointee) for the 2-1 majority, quoting the Second Amendment.  One cannot truly enjoy a constitutionally protected right when the state is permitted to snuff out the means by which he exercises it. All of this makes sense until you realize that cities and states can regulate virtually anything else that s sold. If a city chooses not to allow a bar or a massage parlor, that s their right. It should also be the right of a city to help mitigate crime, and if fewer guns do that, they can ban the sale of guns.Unlike gun manufacturers, though, massage parlors and bars don t have massive lobbying arms to control their every move. These graphs are a couple years old, but little has changed. Most of the NRA s bribery money goes straight into the pockets of Congressmen   236 of them Republican and 25 Democrats.You can bet that it was the NRA who propelled this case to a higher court in the first place.Judge Barry G. Silverman, named to the bench by President Bill Clinton, wrote in dissent, describing the case as  a mundane zoning dispute dressed up as a Second Amendment challenge. Conspicuously missing from this lawsuit is any honest-to-God resident of Alameda County complaining that he or she cannot lawfully buy a gun nearby,  Judge Silverman wrote.The most ridiculous part of this case is that the ordinance that caused the gun store to be turned away doesn t ban gun stores. It simply says they cannot be less than 500 feet from a residence. They wanted to build it 446 feet away.What this means is that as much as Republicans claim to value property rights (and life), when it comes to guns, there are no property rights. If you don t drool over the thought of guns, your right to keep your children away from guns is non-existent because in the United States, it s increasingly becoming guns before people.Featured image by Ethan Miller at Getty Images.