The future of Gun Control, or "It isn’t over till its over"

By Jeff Riley

On June 26th, 2008 the Supreme Court of the United States of America announced the long anticipated decision in the District of Columbia vs. Heller. Writing for the majority, Justice Anthony Scalia stated, in part:

The Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia, and to use that arm for traditional lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home.

It is important to recognize that all nine Supreme Court Justices agreed that the right to possess a firearm is an individual right. The Court finally put a stake through the heart of the "collectivist theory" a theory that the individual right to own a firearm was predicated on belonging to an organized militia.

This is an important victory for gun and self-defense rights advocates, however as the saying goes "The devil is in the details".

Justice Scalia also wrote in his opinion:

Like most rights, the Second Amendment right is not unlimited.

It is not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose: For example, concealed weapons prohibitions have been upheld under the Amendment or state analogues. The Court's opinion should not be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms. Miller's holding that the sorts of weapons protected are those "in common use at the time" finds support in the historical tradition of prohibiting the carrying of dangerous and unusual weapons.

Gun control advocates seized on this part of the majority opinion as well as Justice Stevens’ dissent to argue for "reasonable restrictions". Paul Helmke of the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence issued a statement to the press:

Our fight to enact sensible gun laws will be undiminished by the Supreme Court's decision in the Heller case. While we disagree with the Supreme Court's ruling, which strips the citizens of the District of Columbia of a law they strongly support, the decision clearly suggests that other gun laws are entirely consistent with the Constitution.

For years, the gun lobby has used fear of government gun confiscation to thwart efforts to pass sensible gun laws, arguing that even modest gun laws will lead down the path to a complete ban on gun ownership. Now that the Court has struck down the District's ban on handguns, while making it clear that the Constitution allows for reasonable restrictions on access to dangerous weapons, this 'slippery slope' argument is gone.

On July 14th, 2008 the District of Columbia has given us a preview of what "reasonable restrictions" and the future of gun control efforts might look like. Unveiling the plan, the Mayor of the District Adrian Fenty declared:

We continue to take every step we can to minimize handgun violence in the District," said Mayor Fenty. "We must prevent handguns from falling into the wrong hands or being misused, while allowing District residents to exercise their Second Amendment rights under the Heller ruling.

Accordingly the D.C government is doing the minimum possible to satisfy (or not) the requirements of the Heller decision. From the registration pamphlet posted on the D.C. Metropolitan Police website:

WHAT TYPES OF FIREARMS CAN I REGISTER?

Shotguns, rifles, and revolvers. However, a shotgun barrel cannot be less than 20 inches in length, and a rifle barrel cannot be less than 16 inches in length and must have a total overall length of 26 inches or more. No weapon can shoot more than one shot by a single function of the trigger, or semi-automatically shoot more than 12 shots without manual reloading or be readily converted or restored to do so.

The District of Columbia has taken a page from the Brady Center playbook and has implemented a list of requirements that have been the talking points of gun control advocates for years:

• Ban on semi-automatic handguns
• Registration (can take up to 8 weeks)
• Handgun rationing (only on gun may be registered during the 1st 90 days)
• Ballistic fingerprinting (MD,NJ, and NY had similar programs at a cost of 2.5m, 4.5M respectively, no figure for NY cited with no crimes solved)
• Safe storage, firearms must be secured but allows "An exception is made for a firearm while it is being used against reasonably perceived threat of immediate harm to a person within". Victims are encouraged to have criminals make an appointment before showing up so the victim can remove trigger locks or retrieve their firearm from the gun safe.

In 1976 when the D.C. Council passed its original handgun ban they did not expect to lower the crime rate or reduce the amount of handguns on the street, they instead wanted to set an example for other cities to follow:

Sterling Tucker said city officials realized the law had its limits, that guns would never vanish from the streets. And they never imagined it would do away with homicides and violent crime altogether.

In making by far their boldest public policy decision, Washington's first elected officials wanted other jurisdictions, especially neighboring states, to follow the lead of the nation's capital by enacting similar gun restrictions, cutting the flow of firearms into the city from surrounding areas.

"We were trying to send out a message," recalled Sterling Tucker, the council chairman at the time.

Nadine Winters, also a council member then, said, "My expectation was that this being Washington, it would kind of spread to other places, because these guns, there were so many of them coming from Virginia and Maryland."

It appears that gun control advocates have simply shifted ground from calling for outright gun bans, to implementing “reasonable restrictions” that fall just barely short of an outright ban. Look for them to lobby for increasing the pool of prohibited persons as well as enacting onerous restrictions that will discourage or outright disqualify the average law-abiding citizen from owning a firearm for self-defense. In my next article I will examine some of the so-called reasonable restrictions and why they are anything but reasonable.

Jeff Riley is a Southwest Ohio volunteer for Buckeye Firearms Association.

Related News:
You're Just Whistling Dixie ...

The District's new handgun law -- with its tight restrictions and bureaucratic registration hoops -- is drawing heat.

"It reminds me of 'massive resistance,'" said Clark Neily, a senior attorney at the Institute for Justice, referring to the Southern states' reaction to the Brown v. Board of Education desegregation decision.

"The rhetoric is very similar: 'We have a certain way of doing things here. We don't care what the courts have to say,'" he told NBC4, mocking the city's response to the Supreme Court's recent gun-ban decision by comparing it to one of Dixie's worst periods.

...For those of you who don't know or don't remember, 'massive resistance' was the notorious effort by Southern states to do everything they could to avoid integration. It was an ugly period in terms of respect for the law.