By Dean Rieck

In a brazen show of disrespect for the recent Supreme Court decision, the District of Columbia refused to register Dick Heller's gun when he showed up at police headquarters Thursday morning (July 17, 2008). From USA Today:

USA TODAY's Kevin Johnson reports that the District of Columbia refused this morning to register a handgun on behalf of the security guard whose legal challenge resulted in last month's landmark Supreme Court ruling on the Second Amendment.

Dick Heller was one of two applicants who were waiting at police headquarters when the doors opened to prospective gun owners at 7 a.m. ET. Officers wouldn't let him register a semi-automatic handgun because local laws still ban such weapons.

"The city still does not yet understand the decision of the Supreme Court," Heller says on the steps of police headquarters. "We have been denied again," he adds.

Dane von Breichenruchardt, president of the Bill of Rights Foundation, said the city was attempting to make gun ownership as "difficult and restrictive as possible."

But that's not the half of it.

By John R. Lott, Jr.

The Supreme Court may have confirmed that Americans have the right to own guns for protection, but the gun debate is hardly over.

The District of Columbia, whose handgun ban was struck down by the Supreme Court, is still planning on banning most handguns.

And the court decision has spurred the media into overdrive to paint guns as dangerous to their owners.

No one who has taken even a quick glance at the crime data can seriously argue that the D.C. gun ban lowered murder or violent crime rates.

The concerns being raised are not the threat from criminals, but that guns pose a risk to their owners.

By John Longenecker

There is no such thing as a sensible gun law, and gun bans are a fake-out fraud and abuse of power. Unwind Gun Bans and you begin to unwind other abuses so adverse to Family and Liberty.

The Second Amendment to our Constitution was made absolute for several reasons. In fact, the Second Amendment wasn't even written for citizens.

I get a predictable reaction from talk radio hosts when I say this, but follow-up clears it all up. Gun control is a European concept totally inappropriate for the Founders who escaped that kind of thinking at the nation's inception.

Let's call it for what it is: Gun Bans are a fraud of window dressing and control. Gun bans are a fake-out and abuse of power backed by official Force, and the Supreme Court just struck down a fake-out and abuse of power.

By Jim Irvine

On July 7, 2008 the City Club and the Cleveland Lawyers’ Chapter of the Federalist Society hosted a luncheon forum on gun possession. Alan Gura, who represented Dick Anthony Heller in his successful case against the District of Columbia (DC gun ban case) was the guest speaker.

Buckeye Firearms Foundation sponsored a table. In attendance were State Representative Tom Patton (R-Strongsville) Don Myers, Terry Gallagher, Executive Director, Ohio Patrolman's Benevolent Association, and Buckeye volunteers Hank Olden, Ron Lisy, Chris Chumita and Jim Irvine.

Gura discussed the history of why they chose D.C. and why they chose to go forward at this time.

The District government appears to be headed for disaster as it prepares to craft policies to regulate handgun registration and licensing in response to the Supreme Court's decision declaring unconstitutional the city's absolute ban.

A hearing last week clearly showed that most members on the D.C. City Council want regulations tailored to discourage, to the point of infringement, the ownership of guns. That isn't surprising considering the handgun ban lasted 32 years, but the city's legislative body should get used to the new limits. Any regulations they pass will likely be the subject of a court action if they go too far.

The current idea is to legalize only revolvers and not semiautomatic pistols. This makes little sense. The notion that because the majority of criminals use semiautomatics to commit crimes, law-abiding citizens shouldn't have them is backwards thinking. Phil Mendelson, chairman of the Judiciary Committee admitted that the legislation introduced during the July 1 session was full of holes and unanswered questions.

Click here to read the entire Washington Times editorial.

Related News:
Wanna Load Your D.C. Handgun? Better Be a “Reasonably Perceived Threat of Immediate Harm”

...Following the Supreme Court's favorable Heller decision, city officials in Washington, D.C. have been planning to obstruct D.C. citizens from exercising their right to keep and bear arms, despite the Supreme Court's clear statements. And some in Congress are planning to do something about it.

On Thursday [July 10], Representative Mark Souder (R-Ind.) introduced H. Res. 1331, a rule to govern House consideration of a modified version of H.R. 1399--the "District of Columbia Personal Protection Act."

Department of the Interior Extends Deadline for Comments Regarding Right-to-Carry in National Parks and Wildlife Refuges Until August 8

Like a quarterback taking a knee in the fourth quarter, two of Congress's most ardent opponents of our Right to Keep and Bear Arms are trying to run out the clock on efforts to enhance your right to self-defense in our national parks and wildlife refuges.

For two months, we have been asking NRA members and gun owners to submit comments in support of allowing law-abiding citizens to carry their legally-owned firearms in national parks and wildlife refuges -- and tens of thousand of you have done so. The deadline to submit comments expired on June 30 -- or so we thought.

Rather than closing the proscribed comments period as scheduled and moving toward finalizing this federal regulation, U.S. Senator Daniel Akaka (D-Hawaii) and U.S. Representative Raul Grijalva (D-Arizona), succeeded in delaying the implementation of the final rule by bullying the Department of the Interior (their respective congressional subcommittees have oversight of national parks) to extend the deadline for comments an additional 30 days!

By John R. Lott, Jr.

The Supreme Court's decision Thursday affirming that people have a right to own guns evoked all sorts of reactions. Let's just go through a few of them.

1) One of the strangest was Barack Obama's claim that the court had essentially confirmed what had been his positions all along.

Telling the FOX Business Network...that he had "said consistently that I believe that the Second Amendment is an individual right, and that was the essential decision that the Supreme Court came down on." The Supreme Court struck down the DC handgun ban on the grounds that it violated an individual's right to own a gun. So has Obama consistently supported individual's rights to own guns and opposed the DC handgun ban?

Obama has taken some flack over the last week for his flip-flops on issues ranging from NAFTA to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) to the public financing of campaigns, but the magnitude of this flip-flop surely adds new dimensions to the definition of chutzpah.

Last November, Obama's campaign told the Chicago Tribune that "Obama believes the DC handgun law is constitutional." After Obama's statement yesterday supporting the Supreme Court striking down the ban, Obama's campaign disowned the statement as an “inartful attempt” to characterize his position.

By John Longenecker

June 26th, 2008, The Supreme Court of The United States announced that it was overturning the Washington, D.C. Gun Ban. But does this affect gun laws around the country?

The Supreme Court's ruling that the D.C. Gun Ban is unconstitutional is another victory for all of America, and furnishes a new and updated roadmap of guidance for more Liberty in America for all.

I call attention to the particular defiance of law which brought it all this far to begin with. And again, and again, and again . . .