D.C. Mayor and Attorney General on new gun regs

Washington Post article on the new D.C. gun regulations:

Mayor Adrian Fenty and his feisty attorney general, Peter Nickles, stood on the steps of the Wilson Building this week ostensibly to announce how the District will comply with the Supreme Court's rejection of Washington's ban on handguns. But really, they were delivering very much the opposite message: With only the narrowest of exceptions, we're sticking with our gun ban. Don't like it? Sue us.

"I am pretty confident that the people of the District of Columbia want us to err in the direction of trying to restrict guns," Fenty told me, smiling broadly at the suggestion that what he's really trying to do is make it as hard as possible for Washingtonians to keep a loaded gun at home.

Fenty and Nickles reject any interpretation of the court's decision as a clear statement that Americans may, with very few exceptions, keep and bear what Justice Antonin Scalia called "the quintessential self-defense weapon," the handgun. Rather, the D.C. officials read the decision as an almost academic ruling that although there may be a constitutional right to bear arms to protect yourself, that right is pretty much limited to folks whose house is being broken into right this very second.

The court ruled that there is "no doubt" that "the Second Amendment conferred an individual right to keep and bear arms." But Nickles, the acting attorney general, said that "it's clear the Supreme Court didn't intend for you to have a loaded gun around the house. I don't think the court thought this was going to become a Wild West scene." [emphasis added]

So the mayor and the D.C. Council enacted an emergency law setting up a cumbersome mechanism by which residents who want to own a gun legally may register a weapon if they clear a background check, pass a vision test and a written test on gun safety, pay a fee and wait for the bureaucracy to complete all these steps. "There are circumstances where it could take months," Police Chief Cathy Lanier conceded, and you could almost hear the elected officials around her emitting "heh-hehs" of mischievous delight.

Read the rest here.

Here's another editorial on the new D.C. gun regs:

In striking down the District’s previous handgun ban, the Court ruled 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.” (District of Columbia v. Heller, p. 64)

So what does the District do? It thumbs its nose at the high court and then brags about it to appease liberal pro-gun control voters. According to a statement provided by the mayor’s office, “the handgun ban remains in effect, except for use in self-defense within the home.”

The statement continues, asserting that the bill

“Clarifies the safe-storage and trigger-lock requirements. The legislation modifies existing law to clarify that firearms in the home must be stored unloaded and either disassembled secured with a trigger lock, gun safe, or similar device. An exception is made for a firearm while it is being used against reasonably perceived threat of immediate harm to a person within a registered gun owner’s home. The bill also includes provisions on the transportation of firearms for legal purposes.”

This means that a gun owner must keep his gun in an inoperable condition right up until the moment he realizes there is an actual threat. At that moment and at that moment only may he load, reassemble, unlock, or take out of a safe his gun.

Violent criminals aren’t going to sit around and wait while residents race to load/reassemble/unlock their guns in order to comply with these onerous requirements that have the effect of preventing handguns from being used for “immediate self-defense.”

Sadly, the only beneficiaries of the new D.C. gun regulations will be the lawyers.