The Bakersfield City Council’s 6-1 vote on March 27 to support a decision by the Supreme Court to defend the Second Amendment is a perfect example of meaningless legislation presented as a crude attempt to pander to Bakersfield’s conservative bloc and preserve the Council’s own incumbency.
The Supreme Court is as its namesake; it is the highest law-interpreting body in the U.S.
The Supreme Court justices, who have over a century of judicial experience combined, don’t need the support of a mid-major municipal council to make an educated decision about constitutionality.
The Supreme Court needs Bakersfield’s opinion on gun control as much as Sinead O’Connor needs another haircut.
The view of a seven-member city council representing approximately 300,000 people is a miniscule blip on the radar screen compared to the approximately 300 million people the Court’s decision will affect.
Even if Bakersfield’s opinion was important in the judge’s eyes, the Supreme Court would have to find news of the Bakersfield City Council’s vote on the Internet, as the Bakersfield media is not readily distributed or broadcast in Washington, D.C.
Judging by the age of some of the members of the Supreme Court, they may not even know what the Internet is.
The vote is obviously a way to demonstrate to the Fox News-watching elderly that hold the keys to the council members’ offices that they have their best interests at heart.
Supporting an individual’s right to bear arms is a pretty easy method of getting the gun-toting militia vote in Bakersfield, who want to restrict all but one of the amendments in the Bill of Rights.
These officials were elected to discuss issues that affect Bakersfield and its outlying communities.
The minutes it took to make a meaningless symbolic vote would have been better spent discussing what to do about the impact of drought on the agricultural community, addressing Bakersfield’s high foreclosure rates, stopping unregulated sprawl in Bakersfield’s outskirts, or making public accommodations for the influx of population.
The Bakersfield City Council is collectively trivializing the issue of gun control, an issue that sparks equal ire from opposite ends of the spectrum, with its veiled intentions to take advantage of public opinion.
Only Councilwoman Sue Benham was able to admit that it was “just another attempt by a council member to make a political statement,” according to a March 27 paraphrase by the Bakersfield Californian, a paraphrase that sounds a little bit shaky.