Despite Ruling, Washington Council Still Attacking the Second Amendment

Nearly six months after the Supreme Court put an end to the District of Columbia’s decades-old ban on handgun possession, the City Council here passed a sweeping new ordinance on Tuesday to regulate gun ownership.
The legislation would require all gun owners to receive five hours of safety training and to register their firearms every three years. In addition, they would have to undergo a criminal background check every six years.

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On Bill of Rights Day, Imagine the D.C. Gun Law in 1775

By Stephen P. Halbrook, The Independent Institute

Today is the United States’ Bill of Rights Day, but District of Columbia residents are second-class citizens when it comes to the Second Amendment. President-elect Barack Obama certainly does not support it. When I filed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court this June supporting the respondent in District of Columbia v. Heller on behalf of 55 senators, the senate president, and 250 representatives, Obama declined. And his voting record in the Illinois legislature and the U.S. Congress has been as hostile to American gun owners as King George III was in 1775. What’s in store for Second Amendment rights come January?

Imagine that a…

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Put a Hold on Holder’s Nomination

The Second Amendment is sacrosanct to all freedom-loving Americans. Yet Holder, in his capacity as former deputy attorney general from 1997 to 2001 and acting attorney general in 2001, signed a brief to the Supreme Court last year arguing that “the Second Amendment does not protect firearms possession or use that is unrelated to participation in a well-regulated militia.” This strongly suggests that Holder is hostile to private gun ownership and will work to restrict gun rights.

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Defending Heller from "Faux Conservatism"

Of the many critiques that followed the Supreme Court’s landmark gun rights decision in District of Columbia v. Heller, perhaps the most interesting came from conservative federal Judge J. Harvey Wilkinson III. In a Virginia Law Review article entitled “Of Guns, Abortions, and the Unraveling Rule of Law,” Wilkinson denounced Justice Antonin Scalia’s majority opinion for engaging in judicial activism and compared the reasoning in Heller to that in the abortion rights case Roe v. Wade (not exactly a compliment from one conservative judge to another).

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New DC Gun Law

Looks like DC is, once again, doing its level best to skirt the Supreme Court’s ruling in Heller:

The D.C. Council voted unanimously yesterday to give preliminary approval to legislation that would require gun owners to renew their registrations every three years and to notify police annually whether they still own guns.

The Fire Arms Registration Amendment, which would also ban assault weapons, was described as building on legislation passed by the council in September to adhere to the U.S. Supreme Court ruling overturning the city’s 32-year handgun ban.

The new legislation also mandates Microstamping, a practice that’s not common in the firearms industry.  It also requires training, submission to a background check every six years.  It also bans any unsafe handgun — whatever that means.

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