When the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Washington, D.C.’s handgun ban in the Heller case, the District’s Dems rushed through a package of restrictive gun laws. According to bloomberg.com, “Washington requires residents who want to keep a gun at home to be fingerprinted and photographed by police [what about the gun owner?], provide a five-year work history, and note their intended use of the weapon. Residents must register every firearm they own every three years. Applicants must allow police to run ballistic tests on each gun they register. Firearms defined by the city as assault weapons and magazines that hold more than 10 bullets are banned.” [Click here for the official drill.] Not to mention the $60 fee or the District’s ban on open carry or the impossibility of getting a concealed carry permit. Anyway, yesterday, Heller lawyer Stephen Halbrook asked a three-judge appeals court to tell D.C. to cut that shit out . . .
The D.C. solicitor general said MYODB. Of course, I’m paraphrasing. But this is the watershed moment for gun rights. If the federal judges rule against D.C.’s new regs, the loophole opened by the Supremes in the McDonald decision—allowing for “reasonable restrictions”—will start to close. Once again, Chicago will be next. And then everywhere else.
Meanwhile, the actual he said, she said . . .
Halbrook told the judges the Supreme Court determined the Second Amendment right to own a gun is a fundamental right, limiting the scope of government restrictions.
The solicitor general for the District of Columbia, Todd Kim, replied that the city has authority to keep tabs on who owns guns within its borders and to keep out certain types of weapons.
“Our constitution guarantees a right to keep and bear arms, but not to keep guns secret from the government or possess military style weapons and high capacity magazines,” Kim said in court.
Here’s hoping Mr. Kim has to define and defend a military-style weapons ban and justify a high-capacity magazine ban in front of the judges. And that Halbrock gets a chance to rebut. And that we get to read the testimony.