DC gun ban still in effect

Hot Air wrote yesterday about the first day of the lifting of the gun ban in Washington, DC, our nation’s capitol – where our rights are defended by our government.

The 32-year ban ends this morning — or does it? Even crueler than being first in line for the iPhone only to find they’re out of stock…

Dick Heller is the man who brought the lawsuit against the District’s 32-year-old ban on handguns. He was among the first in line Thursday morning to apply for a handgun permit.

But when he tried to register his semi-automatic weapon, he says he was rejected. He says his gun has seven bullet clip. Heller says the City Council legislation allows weapons with fewer than eleven bullets in the clip. A spokesman for the DC Police says the gun was a bottom-loading weapon, and according to their interpretation, all bottom-loading guns are outlawed because they are grouped with machine guns.

That answers my question the other day about whether my favorite home defense  handgun, the Colt Combat Commander in .45 ACP, would be legal. Apparently it’s Mr. Heller’s favorite, too. So DC has decided that only revolvers and breech loaded hand guns  are legal – the criminals still outgun the law abiding. And basically, the DC government is only allowing the citizenry to arm themselves with “Saturday Night Specials”. What’s next? Only calibers smaller than .32?

What’s amazingly ignorant is that DC contends that semi-automatic handguns are “grouped with machineguns”. It proves that these laws were written by morons who’ve never owned nor fired a weapon. Wait until they discover that some revolvers fire every time the trigger is pulled, too. Then I guess there’ll be provision forbidding double-action revolvers.

But we’ll see. Apparently Heller has a .22 caliber revolver he intends to register (Washington Post link);

 Arriving at 6:30 a.m., accompanied by an adviser, Heller was met outside the building by various police officials. In an animated discussion, they explained to Heller that he needed to show authorities the handgun he wanted to register, and allow it to be test-fired, as part of the registration process.

The adviser, Dane von Breichenruchardt, president of the Bill of Rights Foundation, a public-interest group, said that Heller owns at least two handguns — a .45-caliber semiautomatic pistol and a .22-caliber revolver — and that the weapons have been stored for years with a friend in Maryland.

Although officials said that gun owners in Heller’s situation can bring legally owned revolvers from other jurisdictions into the District to register them, von Breichenruchardt said he had told Heller not to do so without written assurance that it was permissible.

After Assistant Police Chief Peter J. Newsham publicly promised Heller that he would “absolutely not” get in trouble for bringing a revolver into the city, Heller said he would bring the weapon to police headquarters this morning to start the registration process.

Police Lt. Jon Shelton, head of the registration office, predicted that more people will come forward after news broadcasts show Heller going through the process. “Once someone sees Mr. Heller walk in that door with his gun and start the registration process, then walk back out with his gun, it may be a different story,” he said.

If a resident doesn’t already own a hand gun  it’s all for naught, the only handgun dealer in DC is awaiting a revision to his license according to the Washington Post;

Charles Sykes Jr. has been selling guns since 1994 to active and retired police officers and security companies out of an unmarked office in Anacostia. But right now his business, CS Exchange, is on hold because he recently changed locations on Good Hope Road SE and his permit needs to be amended.

Sykes said the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives told him that it could be 30 to 90 days before his papers are in order again.

For now, D.C. residents who want to buy handguns have no legal options. Under federal law, people can arrange to buy handguns out of state, but the pickups must be from federally licensed dealers in their home states. To meet federal requirements, guns are shipped across the border between two dealers, typically for a fee.

So while DC plays paddy-cake with the legal in’s and outs of the new law, they can probably expect Mr. Heller to file another lawsuit for forbidding his seven-shot semi-auto. According to Hot Air, Scalia addressed the portion of the law that forbids the District’s ban on semi-auto weapons;

Miller said, as we have explained, that the sorts of weapons protected were those “in common use at the time.”… We think that limitation is fairly supported by the historical tradition of prohibiting the carrying of “dangerous and unusual weapons.”… It may be objected that if weapons that are most useful in military service—M-16 rifles and the like—may be banned, then the Second Amendment right is completely detached from the prefatory clause. But as we have said, the conception of the militia at the time of the Second Amendment’s ratification was the body of all citizens capable of military service, who would bring the sorts of lawful weapons that they possessed at home to militia duty. It may well be true today that a militia, to be as effective as militias in the 18th century, would require sophisticated arms that are highly unusual in society at large.

I doubt the Left would tolerate this type of interpretation on one of their envoronmental laws by a Republican Administration.

Category: Politics