The DC Gun Challenge

gun.gifHere’s some interesting stuff about the current litigation of the Washington D.C. Gun Case: Washington D.C.’s challenge to the recent Federal Court ruling that their gun ban is unconstitutional asserts that its gun ban is constitutional because:

  1. It only applies to handguns
  2. The Second Amendment only restrains the federal government, not states or local governments like D.C.
  3. D.C.’s gun ban is reasonable because it has saved “thousands of lives.”

According to the DCGunCase blog, Bob Levy in Legal Times (PDF) makes the following observations about D.C.’s three claims:

  1. Not only does the ban apply to handguns, but restrains rife and shotgun owners to disassemble or lock their unloaded firearms, thus rendering them virtually useless for self-defense. D.C.’s Mayor Fenty weakly makes the claim that these guns are suitable for home defense. One judge in the case observed that the city could have enacted a complete gun ban claiming that sabers were still legal.
  2. D.C.’s claim that they are a “local” government and should be exempt from the second amendment fails because the Constitution expressly grants to Congress, not a state, plenary legislative power over all matters whatsoever in the nation’s capital. Because the Second Amendment indisputably applies to the federal government, it therefore applies to the District, a federal enclave.
  3. Has the D.C. gun ban saved “thousands of lives?” Before the District banned handguns in 1976, its murder rate had been declining. But soon afterward, the rate climbed to the highest of all large U.S. cities. It also rose relative to nearby Maryland and Virginia, as well as relative to other cities with more than 500,000 people. During the 31-year life of the ban, with the exception of a few years during which the city’s murder rate ranked second or third, there have been more killings per capita in Washington, D.C., than in any other major city. The rate climbed as high as 81 murders per 100,000 inhabitants in 1991 – triple the pre-ban levels. As of 2005, the last year for which I have data, the murder rate was still 32 percent above the 1976 level.

We’re going to keep tuned in to the DCGunCase blog since any landmark decision by SCOTUS will affect gun ordinances everywhere.

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