The Brady Campaign exemplifies the principles of mainstream gun control; they are the foremost organization fighting the Second Amendment. They give out grades based on how well states have followed their principles.
Though they do not currently have a grade posted for the District of Columbia, they had one before the
case. Let's see what we can learn from a top student.
WASHINGTON, DC -- A few days after releasing its annual report cards for gun laws to every state in the nation, the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence today added a grade -- for the District of Columbia.
The District earned a "B."...
The District was rated based on its juvenile possession law,
its stipulation that guns must be kept in non-firing condition, its ability to pass local laws, its ban on sales without a background check and
its tight restrictions on concealed weapons permits. The District's score suffers, however, because of the threat of Congress."Given the current balance of power on Capitol Hill, until the District secures full voting representation in Congress, our gun laws are going to be under siege during every legislative session," said Ladd Everitt, president of the DC Chapter of the Million Mom March. "D.C. residents owe a huge debt of gratitude to Mayor Anthony Williams, Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton and Chief of Police Charles H. Ramsey, all of whom have fought tenaciously to protect our gun laws and neighborhoods."
Source:
http://www.dcvote.org/media/media.cfm?mediaID=1194&year=2006 The District would have had an "A", but for "the threat of Congress." The dog really did eat their homework. They are "A" students.
There are two factors in fighting crime--how you treat the guilty and how you treat the innocent.
It is a crime in the District of Columbia to have a gun in your home that can actually shoot bullets. Guns are
ok, as long as they are useless. In order to ensure their uselessness, they must always be unloaded. In order
to be doubly sure, they must always be disassembled or bound by a trigger lock.
Making a gun useful by assembling (or unlocking) and loading it is a crime. The excuse that you are trying
to protect your family—or repel a rapist or avoid death—will not do.
When confronted with this reality, the District tried to argue that they don't really mean it. They tried to
convince the Supreme Court in Heller that there is an exception for self-defense.
Such an exception is fairly implied in the trigger lock requirement, just as it is in many of
the District‟s other laws.{50}
The problem is that they met and defeated that very defense in McIntosh v. Washington.{51} It is illegal to
load a gun in your home for self-defense. Period. Defending your business with a functional gun is legal.
These are the laws regarding long guns—rifles and shotguns. The situation with handguns is even worse.
You cannot possess a handgun that you did not register before Sept 1976. Even if you have a registered
handgun, you need a special permit to move it from room to room in your own house. Permits are
impossible to get.{52} And of course your registered handgun must remain useless at all times. (You may load
guns kept at your place of business.)
These “reasonable,” “common sense" laws—carefully designed to prevent gun crimes, self-inflicted
wounds, and armed toddlers—caused Parker (the lead litigant in the original DC case, the precursor to
Heller) distress. A community activist, her outspoken opposition to drugs earned the enmity of a local
dealer, who threatened to kill her.
She should depend on the police, says the common wisdom. They are professionals, pledged to serve and
protect. Less known is the fact that they have no obligation to do either, as established in court:
Illustrative of this
failure is the case of Warren v.District of Columbia, 444 A.2d
1 (D.C. 1981.) In the late winter of 1975, three women (Warren, Taliaferro and Douglas,
plus Douglas‟s four-year-old daughter) were asleep in a rooming house on Lamont Street,
NW in the District. In the early morning hours, two burglars entered the property and
raped Douglas. Warren and Taliaferro heard Douglas‟ screams and called the MPD at
6:23 a.m. to report a burglary in progress. They were assured police were on the way. At
6:26 a.m., three cruisers were dispatched to the rooming house on a “priority 2” call. One
officer knocked on the door while other officers remained in their cruisers. Receiving no
response at the door, the officers left. Warren and Taliaferro watched in horror from the
roof of their building before crawling back into their room, where they continued to hear
Douglas‟ screams. They called the MPD again at 6:42 a.m. and asked for immediate
assistance. Again, they were told assistance was on the way. The dispatcher never
dispatched additional police, unbeknownst to the two who yelled reassurance to Douglas
and were, as a result, discovered by the burglars. All three women were then abducted at
knifepoint and held prisoner for 14 additional hours, while being beaten, robbed, raped
and directed to perform sex acts on each other.
All three women subsequently brought a tort action against the MPD for its failure to
respond and protect them from the assaults. All three had their cases dismissed.{53}To summarize, the District's position is that you must pay taxes for police who have no duty to protect
you.{54} You may possess long guns, but they must always be kept in a useless condition, even when you are
under attack. To meet Heller’s legal challenge, the District now maintains that there is a self-defense
exception—a position they have previously defeated in court. Under this newly adopted position, a person
under immediate attack is allowed to assemble or unlock their weapon and load it. D.C. desires that the
Supreme Court should not address this “reasonable” law, still on the books, nor the legal precedent set by
the District's victory, but should take the District at its word on its future enforcement.
So let's take them at their word (for the sake of discussion only).
A law-abiding woman lives alone. She keeps a long gun as allowed in the District. At 2:00 AM, a drug
dealer breaks into her house and the race starts. She must awaken from a dead sleep, remove the lock (or
assemble the gun!), retrieve the ammunition, load the gun, and bring it into position in time to protect
herself.
Source (and to read the footnotes): www.obamaonsecond.com
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