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D.C. on verge of new gun law
The Washington Times ^ | 7-15-08 | David C. Lipscomb and Gary Emerling

Posted on 07/15/2008 12:23:50 PM PDT by JZelle

The District, rebuffed by the Supreme Court last month in a landmark decision on its 32-year-old gun ban, could soon be headed back to court over a new gun law that could take effect as early as Wednesday.

The D.C. Council will vote Tuesday on emergency legislation that will require handgun owners to keep their weapons disassembled or under lock and key in what gun rights advocates see as direct defiance of the Supreme Court ruling.

That ruling said the District could not bar residents from "rendering any lawful firearm in the home operable for the purpose of immediate self-defense."

Some interpreted that language at the time as prohibiting any requirement for gun locks.

"They're doing everything that they can to not comply with the Supreme Court ruling," said Chris Cox, chief lobbyist for the National Rifle Association, who dismissed the proposed legislation as "a joke."

"Unless the criminal calls you beforehand and lets you know he's coming over ... you're going to be left defenseless," Mr. Cox said.

D.C. interim Attorney General Peter J. Nickles acknowledged that officials expected strong reactions to the emergency legislation, which will be in effect for only 90 days.

"We expect a lot of public input, [and] we probably expect also a lawsuit," he said. "We will learn from what it is we see, and it may be appropriate to change some of the measures."

In the majority Supreme Court opinion that struck down the District's gun ban, Justice Antonin Scalia wrote that "the District´s ban on handgun possession in the home violates the Second Amendment, as does its prohibition against rendering any lawful firearm in the home operable for the purpose of immediate self-defense."

(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...


TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Culture/Society; US: District of Columbia
KEYWORDS: arrogance; banglist; fenty; gunlaw; heller; seebreakingnews; shallnotbeinfringed
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To: JZelle
Keep your gun right by the front door loaded and ready and let them say you can't. The SCOTUS says you can. DC loses that fight. Anyway, I don't think that there is a cop in the world that would arrest you for having a "non-locked" weapon in your home. Just ludicrous.

There is a Freeper on this board has a tagline that says: "I keep a gun in my nightstand because a cop won't fit." I couldn't agree more.

21 posted on 07/15/2008 1:08:47 PM PDT by mc5cents (Show me just what Mohammd brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman)
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To: Phlyer

This is why I sent $$ to NRA for a Life Membership. NRA should immediately bring this to the attention of the US Supreme Court. Clearly, the DC council is flaunting their ruling.


22 posted on 07/15/2008 1:10:05 PM PDT by Eric in the Ozarks
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To: tcostell

“It’s really about keeping minorities disarmed.” Say what? This is about the silliest comment I’ve read in a very long time. The left wants to do away with the right to keep and bear arms...the 2nd amendment. That is the extreme danger we face as American citizens. Race is absolutely irrelevant. Your contention that the ...central thesis of modern gun control...” is somehow race based is just goofy.


23 posted on 07/15/2008 1:15:27 PM PDT by Oldpuppymax (AGENDA OF THE LEFT EXPOSED)
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To: JZelle; All

Where is the ACLU????


24 posted on 07/15/2008 1:22:47 PM PDT by KevinDavis (Barak Obama: The Candidate of Clarification)
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To: tcostell
they don't care if a rich white guy from the suburbs wants to but a $10,000 over under shotgun. It's really about keeping minorities disarmed.

As a rich (at least when tax hikes are under discussion) white guy from the suburbs, I haven't noticed myself receiving any particular exemptions from the gun laws. Unlike homies buying stolen merchandise out of the trunk of a car.

Also unlike homie, a mandatory 6 months for having a gun in the console is actually a threat to me - what with a job to lose and responsibilities to take care of, and no old friends in the cell block I wanted to see again anyway.

I don't think gun grabbers care about disarming minorities one way or the other. Homies mainly murder other homies, and liberals mainly live somewhere else. The bogeyman is always the disgruntled white guy going postal (once or twice a year), not the nightly tribal wars downtown.

25 posted on 07/15/2008 1:24:12 PM PDT by CGTRWK
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To: wideawake

“Perhaps a fat award would give them some religion.”

What good would that do? That reward would be paid by the tax-payers, as usual....NOT the DemocRats opposing the right to bear arms.


26 posted on 07/15/2008 1:28:08 PM PDT by XenaLee
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To: Dionysius
My thoughts exactly.........

MOLON LABE

27 posted on 07/15/2008 1:30:58 PM PDT by Osage Orange (Hillary's heart is blacker than the devil's riding boots...............)
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To: XenaLee
What good would that do?

It would tell them that they can either spend all that loot on their pet projects or they can deny their citizens their Second Amendment rights, but that there is not enough in the budget to do both.

28 posted on 07/15/2008 1:31:25 PM PDT by wideawake (Why is it that those who call themselves Constitutionalists know the least about the Constitution?)
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To: JZelle
"You cannot invade the mainland United States. There would be a rifle behind every blade of grass." ----Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, he that awakened the sleeping giant...

Thank God for the 2nd Amendment.

29 posted on 07/15/2008 1:37:11 PM PDT by mc5cents (Show me just what Mohammd brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman)
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To: tcostell

Actually, in DC, its about keeping the victims disarmed. DC is a kleptocracy in the best Third-World style. Mugabe would probably be right at home as mayor...


30 posted on 07/15/2008 1:38:53 PM PDT by Little Ray (I'm a Conservative. But I can vote for John McCain. If I have to. I guess.)
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To: KevinDavis
Where is the ACLU????

Nevada apparently.

31 posted on 07/15/2008 1:44:10 PM PDT by Dead Corpse (What would a free man do?)
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To: Osage Orange
People - including probably Heller - will keep his gun in his home without a trigger lock.

How would they prove that?

Well, the cynic in me wonders why you think they'd need to prove it? They could arrest the guy and the burden of proof would be on him that he had, in fact, had it locked and managed to get it unlocked in time.

If he could show that - with an evidence trail of the lock sitting by the gun, and a demonstration of how quickly he could get it unlocked - then I expect they'd charge him with something because if he had that much time he should have just retreated from the apartment. The so-called "Castle" doctrine is only considered a legitimate justification for use of lethal force in a few states, so he'd have to show he did not have a reasonable chance to retreat yet did have enough time to get the lock off.

And all this before a DC judge and jury.

I expect he'd get convicted.
32 posted on 07/15/2008 2:22:32 PM PDT by Phlyer
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To: Dead Corpse
Believe it or not, the head of the Tampa ACLU, a former intelligence officer, argued in an article that gun laws are unconstitutional under the ninth amendment. I haven't read the article but I would like to find it. A lawyer friend of mine mentioned it to me and I've never considered the issue from that view.

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

So that would give me to believe that the Tampa ACLU thinks ownership of implements of self defense are a natural right...i.e. a right that cannot be legislated on.

What do you think?

33 posted on 07/15/2008 2:22:38 PM PDT by KDD ( it's not what people don't know that make them ignorant it's what they know that ain't so.)
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To: Oldpuppymax

” “It’s really about keeping minorities disarmed.” Say what? This is about the silliest comment I’ve read in a very long time. The left wants to do away with the right to keep and bear arms...the 2nd amendment. That is the extreme danger we face as American citizens. Race is absolutely irrelevant. Your contention that the ...central thesis of modern gun control...” is somehow race based is just goofy”

The first gun bans enacted in this country were in the wake of the Civil War, in order to keep the newly-freed blacks from being armed. Gotta keep those N-words from getting uppity and all....


34 posted on 07/15/2008 2:23:00 PM PDT by Mr Inviso
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To: KDD
This is a law breaking action by DC and will never make it to the USSC
Actually, SCOTUS ordered DC to give Heller permission to have a gun in his home or, in effect, to show cause why not (i.e., if Heller turned out to be a felon or something). So Mr. Heller would seem to have an awfully big hammer in the lowest court in DC, if DC messes with him personally in the way they seem to propose to continue to treat the populace of DC.

35 posted on 07/15/2008 2:23:53 PM PDT by conservatism_IS_compassion (The conceit of journalistic objectivity is profoundly subversive of democratic principle.)
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To: KDD
Of course this is Florida...where we do not have a “duty to retreat” law...or other Washington DC- NYC idiocy laws.
36 posted on 07/15/2008 2:26:29 PM PDT by KDD ( it's not what people don't know that make them ignorant it's what they know that ain't so.)
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To: conservatism_IS_compassion

After the Heller decision, there is a 21-day stay for the USSC to revise its decision. Then, the decision is remanded to the DC Apellate Court, which has the RAA to issue order to see the USSC decision enforced.

If Heller files a complaint that the new law infringes on the USSC opinion, the Apellate court can strike it down immediately.

(IANAL, but that is how I see it).


37 posted on 07/15/2008 2:30:35 PM PDT by patton (cuiquam in sua arte credendum)
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To: Oldpuppymax
"... Your contention that the ...central thesis of modern gun control...” is somehow race based is just goofy."

Boy, are you dreadfully mistaken.

Race is exactly what gun control is founded upon. It always has been. Sure, I agree that gun grabbers are out to grab all guns and demolish the 2nd Amendment, but the heart of the issue is entirely race-based and has been since it's conception. Though they want a blanket ban on all firearms, it's really because they're too politically correct (in their concealment) to just want the guns out of the hands of the people that they've always wanted to deny guns to most. You see, we are a global village and must all share the burden equally down to the lowest common denomi-nigger, if you'll pardon my use of that racial slur so that you'll understand their true agenda.

I can state many historical examples proving the very obvious race-based anti RKBA measures of post-Civil War Reconstruction, Jim Crow, and late 19th/early 20th Century laws in Chicago and NYC, but a good example in recent memory is how it came to be that the modern gun control movement left behind the literary society set of Manhattan penthouses and went downtown into the ghetto with the 'Million Mom March' where it remains today. That's also where you'll find the pro-Abortion movement these days, by the way.

I once spied on a 'Million Mom March' gathering and counted exactly one white family -- a mother and her two young daughters -- hovering unwelcome around the outer fringe of a sea of inner-city urban ethnics who appeared there bused in by their African-centric churches, and it was impossible to miss how the demographics of the gun control movement have changed in recent years. Where I used to see predominantly white 'awareist' yuppies and Joan Baez-like lefties at gun control demonstrations back in the late '80s, the crowd had now become a threatening mob of borderline criminal parents lamenting the deaths of their obvious criminal offspring. This is not where activist money comes from, not where convincing activists come from, and certainly not where a lot of public sympathy goes to, but that's where the gun control movement exists today because they were the target demographic all along. The murder rates were never there for white teens to get anyone justifiably excited about gun control. It's always been about blacks and Hispanics as far as gun control activists are concerned. White liberals in favor of gun control don't mourn the loss of disadvantaged inner city youth who die from gunfire, it's that they don't want to get shot by one of them while at the same time they call gun owners paranoid.

Believe me, if you could see the mental picture in a gun control activist's mind if you asked them to imagine a violent person coming their way holding a gun meaning to do evil, that person wouldn't look like the chairman of the NRA and would instead look like someone from the ghetto (more often than not these days someone from their own neighborhood), and you can be damned certain of that.

The only white people left in the gun control movement are the two smiling white faces (one of them in a wheelchair) who no longer serve as anything but recognizable corporate mascots in the same way that Betty Crocker's portrait appears on a box of cake mix. The only other white faces you'll see on the issue of gun control is the occasional representation of a fat unshaven hillbilly with an NRA hat in political cartoons. Only Josh Sugarmann is still trying to make a living out of gun control trying to get a five buck donation from anyone who will still listen to his 'not for profit' outfit's worn out schtick.

You may think that this is actually proving your point, in that the modern gun control movement isn't race-based because it is now in the hands of inner city blacks like Jesse Jackson and Rev. Wright -- so how could it be racist?

I contend that's the community where gun controllers have struggled for ages to gain a foothold. Now that they're there, gun control's founders have entirely lost interest in the notion and are on to other more important things like alarmism over climate change and so on. Just like how Planned Parenthood focuses almost solely on blacks and Hispanics for their Eugenicist cause. Mission complete!

Justice Clarence Thomas knew precisely this when he voted in favor of Heller in the recent US Supreme Court decision preserving our inherent right to keep and bear arms. I can guarantee you that several paragraphs in the majority opinion as outlined by Justice Scalia are Justice Thomas' words alone. Note also how many gun control activists decried Thomas' vote in published opinion pieces where they asked questions along the lines of 'How could he vote in favor of guns knowing that it's young people of his skin color that are dying in cities across America from gun violence?'.

You can bet your last dollar that gun control is racist.

38 posted on 07/15/2008 3:23:26 PM PDT by The KG9 Kid
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To: patton
...the decision is remanded to the DC Apellate Court, which has the RAA to issue order to see the USSC decision enforced.

So, do I understand the DC Appellate court will rule on DC new rules as to whether they are in compliance with the SCOTUS ruling? If so, when?

39 posted on 07/15/2008 3:34:28 PM PDT by TexasRedeye (Eschew obfuscation)
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To: tcostell

Not just minorities


40 posted on 07/15/2008 3:50:56 PM PDT by wastedyears (Show me your precious darlings, and I will crush them all)
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