Earlier this month, the city of Chicago wrote a check for $399,950 to the Second Amendment Foundation, a gun rights group located in Bellevue, Wash. The check was a reimbursement for legal fees the foundation incurred in the McDonald v. Chicago case, which resulted in the United States Supreme Court overturning the city’s ban on handguns.
“The city lost that action,” said Julianne Versnel, the foundation’s director of operations. “Because it was a constitutional civil rights case, the city was required to pay the cost.”
Like all city checks, it’s signed by Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Comptroller Amer Ahmad. The McDonald case was argued and lost by Richard M. Daley’s administration. But that’s not stopping Ted Cruz, a U.S. Senate candidate from Texas, from using it to tweak Emanuel. Cruz posted a photo of the check on his campaign website, under the headline “Rahm Pays For Violating Second Amendment.”
Very, very cool. Here’s a shot of the actual check that Rahm Emanuel had to write to the Second Amendment Foundation for the City of Chicago’s violating our right to keep and bear arms.
As the Solicitor General of Texas, I was honored to lead the States before the U.S. Supreme Court in the Heller case, which resulted in a landmark 5-4 victory, protecting our fundamental Second Amendment rights.
(District of Columbia v. Heller overturned Washington, D.C.’s gun regulations.)
Coincidentally, the Second Amendment Foundation announced yesterday that it will lead the appeal of a U.S. District Court decision upholding Illinois’s ban on conceal carry. Thanks to the Chicago treasury, its lawyers will have more money to pursue that case.
"Illinois is probably our single biggest battleground right now," said the foundation's executive director, Alan Gottlieb.
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