Again, my apologies, but it's going to happen while we're in this crazy filming season. Here's a good piece in Reason Online on the rule of law, or the absence of it, in Washington D.C.:
Excuse Me While I Get My GunYou know, if I spat n the face of the Supreme Court...hell, if I spat in the face of a J-P in Traffic Court, I'd be in the slam so fast one's head would spin like Linda Blair on crack...of course, D.C. is betting that once b-HO, or as we might want to refer to him, Robert Mugabe Lite, is elected all laws are up for grabs.
Washington, D.C., defies the Supreme Court's Second Amendment ruling.
D.C.'s political leaders know they are inviting another Second Amendment lawsuit, but they are determined to defy the Supreme Court and the Constitution for as long as possible.
The new law "clarifies that no carry license is required inside the home" to move a gun from one room to another. It also "clarifies" the District's firearm storage requirements, saying a gun may be unlocked and loaded "while it is being used to protect against a reasonably perceived threat of immediate harm to a person" in the home.
Much hinges on what counts as a "reasonably perceived threat." If you're awakened in the middle of the night by a crash, may you carry a loaded gun with you as you investigate? Evidently not. The Washington Post reports that D.C.'s acting attorney general, Peter Nickles, "said residents could neither keep their guns loaded in anticipation of a problem nor search for an intruder on their property." According to Nickles, if you see an armed criminal charging your home, or in the event of "an actual threat by somebody you believe is out to hurt you," you're allowed to get your gun, unlock it, and load it.
How long will that take? The new law lets people use a gun safe instead of a trigger lock, which, depending on the type of safe, could allow faster retrieval. But even a gun in a safe has to be kept unloaded, which will tend to slow down the owner's response to a "reasonably perceived threat," assuming he can figure out what that means.
The delay will be even longer because of the District's ridiculously broad ban on "machine guns." The Metropolitan Police Department says the ban covers all handguns except revolvers, which are more cumbersome to load than semiautomatics with detachable magazines.
On the happier side of the scale, this from the Boston Globe Sunday Magazine on Stephen Scherer, the 19 year old who'll be representing the U.S. on 10-meter air rifle in Beijing...the punch line is he came from a very antigun home:
Not bad for a teenager from Billerica who professes a love of all things Army and his admiration for Jimi Hendrix in the same breath. And whose mother didn't even want him to have a squirt gun as a boy.
"I was very anti-gun when my kids were little," says Scherer's mother, Sue, who works a number of different jobs, including cleaning and painting houses, running a day care, and organizing Jeopardy!-style entertainment for nursing homes. "I always thought, `Guns are bad. Guns kill people.' So, I didn't want my kids to have anything to do with guns."
The funny thing about DC is that when the GOP took control of the House and Senate in the 1994 elections, Republicans came to DC packing. DC has it's laws and Republican staffers from conservative parts of the country have their own. Try telling a Texan they can't have a gun under their bed to protect themselves in the seedy parts of DC. Good luck with that as they say.
ReplyDeleteFolks:
ReplyDeleteHe's controversial, but check out John Lott's website for today. he has a link to a Tacoma report about an attempted robbery foiled by an armed citizen.
I'm almost speechless re:DC...trying to "Nickles" and dime us to death - and no reporting.
To make matters worse, in many locals, having a loaded magazine, even if said magazine is separate from the gun, is legally considered a "loaded gun".
ReplyDeletealfsauve
I'd like to once again reiterate how vitally important it is that all gun owners unite to defeat Barack Hussein Obama.
ReplyDeleteThe Heller decision is a step in the right direction, but a flood of litigation is yet to come. Heller left unanswered some pretty big questions:
* Is the 2nd Amendment incorporated to the States under the 14th Amendment?
* What is the level of judicial scrutiny under which an abridgement of 2nd Amendment rights shall be analyzed?
* What is a firearm in common use for the purposes of 2nd Amendment protection?
* What constitutes a "reasonable" restriction on gun ownership?
* How do laws that affect not guns themselves, but other things such as ammunition, optics, magazines, etc., relate to "keep and bear arms"?
* How do laws that affect things like concealed carry, registration, license fees, mandatory testing, ballistic registration, etc., relate?
Because these issues are left open ended by Heller, the coming flood of litigation could potentially erase nearly all our rights under our newly affirmed right to keep and bear arms. An Obama-appointed judiciary could easily rule that each and every restriction, rule, regulation, and other roadblock to your rights is fine and dandy!
I know many gun owners are less than enthused by John McCain. Well... the time has come to put all that aside and focus on the bigger picture. We have two, and ONLY two choices for President. The next President WILL be either John McCain, or Barack Hussein Obama.
The contrast between them is startling!
Let's ALL get behind John McCain NOW and for the future of our Right to Keep and Bear Arms!