DC got guns again...

[Canuck_Buck]

WASHINGTON"” The District of Columbia Council approved new firearms legislation Tuesday that will allow residents to begin applying for handgun permits this week.[/b]
The council's unanimous vote comes as officials try to comply with last month's U.S. Supreme Court ruling that struck down the city's 32-year-old ban on handguns.
The emergency legislation will allow handguns to be kept in the home if they are used only for self-defense and carry fewer than 12 rounds of ammunition.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,383345,00.html

[ipscshooter]

Wake up call for the non-thinkers who believe that the Heller case settled 2nd Amendment law and so there's not a pressing need to keep a conservative in the White House... and conservatives on the SCOTUS.

[Alsatian]

ORIGINAL: ipscshooter

Wake up call for the non-thinkers who believe that the Heller case settled 2nd Amendment law and so there's not a pressing need to keep a conservative in the White House... and conservatives on the SCOTUS.

Yes,I have to agree withipscshooter.After reading the article about theproposedEmergency DC gun registration law, it doesNOT sound like they have heard the music playing. As the NRAsays, this new legislation will likely again be challenged. Iwonder whenatax payer is going to raise a stink and ask why limited tax dollars are being wasted on quixotic litigation in pursuit of curtailment of second amendment rights in the face of constitutional protections? Don't count on the ACLU doing so.

So now DC will have a registration process which is acknowledged to probably take weeks or months to traverse -- could this mean, reading between the lines, YEARS in actuality??? You will have to undergo a criminal check -- I'm not sure what this is, but it sounds more involved than the existing check that is done at the purchase counter of your firearms dealer that takes about, maybe 10 minutes. You have to take a written test -- to determine what? your appropriate mind-synch with Democrats? And you have to take a vision test. I am reading between the lines, but given the history of DC I think reading these procedures as obstructionist -- akin to Jim Crow voting laws in the South that threw up obstacles to black voting one after another.

And then, supposing you get your registration, you must keep the handgun in your home disassembled or protected with a trigger lock. I'm thinking that a handgun with a trigger lock on it is pretty friggin' useless for home self-defense. I don't think the criminals are going to give me a lot of advance notice before they invade my home and attack me. As a matter of fact, I do keep my firearms with trigger locks installed and often I am separated from my trigger lock key. I would have to chase down that key, probably sitting on the mantle, dash to the gun cabinet, remove the trigger lock, load, and confront the criminals. If crime were much of a threat in my neighborhood -- which it is not -- I would not keep a trigger lock on my go-to self-defense arm.

If this Supreme Court decision was related to making it easier for minorities to vote, this obstructionism and intractability of DC would be widely decried in the media. But not when it pertains to promoting a media hobby-horse, the further constraining of gun rights.

[Aught Six]

Got an interesting factoid for you guys. There are currently sixFFL holdersin DC:

Arena Stage
The Shakespeare Theater Company
Josh Sugarman of the Violence Policy Center
The U.S. Bureau ofAlcohol, Tobacco and Firearms
K S Supply and Cs Exchange Ltd.

[hillbillyhunter1]

Based on the SCOTUS ruling:

I think If I was a DC resident I'd just buy and keep whatever the hell gun I wanted...not register it...and sue the city if they arrested me for it.

[Alsatian]

ORIGINAL: hillbillyhunter1

Based on the SCOTUS ruling:

I think If I was a DC resident I'd just buy and keep whatever the hell gun I wanted...not register it...and sue the city if they arrested me for it.

If you read the SCOTUS ruling to indicate that registration is counter to the second amendment, you are reading stuff into the ruling. The ruling is mute about where the boundaries lie, but was clear that the standing DC law crossed that boundary. Seems to me that still requiring the guns to be disassembled and/or locked up does speak to subjects discussed before the court. I recollect Scalia mocked the idea that a disassembled gun and/or a gun with a trigger lock installed could be of much use in a self-defense situation. The Washington DC advocate had said that these guns would be accessible in three seconds; Scalia scowled and said "What? First you fetch your glasses, then you open your bedside table drawer, then . . . three seconds are up." I do think throwing a bunch of obstructions and obnoxious conditions in the way of people seeking to comply with the law will be seen through, just as Jim Crow laws were seen through.

As to just disobeying the law, the problem is that you and your family are then at severe risk. While you are fighting the good fight in the court, maybe with help from the NRA maybe on your own using your own limited $$$, you may remain incarcerated and/or charged with a federal crime. This can have negative affects on your job, on seeking a new job, on seeking loans, on seeking commercial loans for a business. I think from point of view of self-defense you may need to make the shrewd judgment (1) how much risk am I exposed to from criminals? (2) what are my odds of being discovered to be in violation of the law? and just making a decision.

[hillbillyhunter1]

You're right Alsatian and I don't have time for a lawsuit. I'll just have to live somewere else..Thank God.

It's alright if I at least encourage those who do live there to break the law isn't it

[Alsatian]

Well, I'm with you in spirit. I don't like what I read Washington DC is doing. It sounds to me -- and maybe I'm over reacting and reading things between the lines that aren't there -- that they are just trying to game the supreme court decision and effectively ban legal handgun ownership under different language -- akin to Jim Crow legislation of the past. If this is the case, I sincerely hope that this is challenged in court again. While this might get to the supreme court, remember that in the Heller case the Supreme Courtupheld the decision of the next lower court that the Washington DC ban was unconstitutional. If this was to go up through the court system again, my guess is the supreme court would not hear it, saying the issue had been satisfactorily resolved by the lower court. And again, at some point, you gotta think some tax payer is going to hammer those dill weeds with an ideological axe to grind committing their city to large and unnecessarylitigation fees in support of their ideological hobby horse.