Defending Second Amendment Rights One Weapon at a Time
Jacob Sullum | July 21, 2008, 3:34pm
Alan Gura, Dick Heller's attorney, reports that the .22-caliber revolver his client began to register last week is the same weapon he tried to register in 2002 before suing the District of Columbia over its handgun ban. Therefore, Gura says, assuming Heller is allowed to register the revolver and keep it at home, "the city appears to be complying with the literal command of the [Supreme Court] judgment," which said "the District must permit [Heller] to register his handgun" as long as he is not "disqualified from the exercise of Second Amendment rights" (i.e., has no criminal or psychiatric record that bars him from owning a firearm). Gura adds:
That does not mean that the rest of the D.C. Code with respect to firearms is constitutional. Much of it is not. But the entire code was not directly at issue in our case. It is our hope that Mayor Fenty and the City Council, or Congress, if the Mayor and City Council are unwilling to do so, sit down with their code books and the Supreme Court's opinion, and make a serious effort to conform the former to the latter. If the political branches do not make the city's firearm laws constitutional, then as we've seen, the courts will do it for them.
In particular, the remaining storage requirements (which say even a gun locked in a safe must also be kept unloaded) and the "machine gun" ban (which the city used to stop Heller from registering a .45-caliber pistol with a seven-round magazine, arguing that the ban covers most semiautomatics) seem ripe for challenge. I'll have more on this in my column on Wednesday.
a non e mouse | July 23, 2008, 11:43am | #
>>In 2005 (the latest year for which data is >>available) Firearm deaths accounted for just >>over 0.7% of ALL deaths in America (789 >>Accidental deaths, 17002 Suicides, out of a >>total of 2,448,017 deaths.)
>You left out homicides: 10,100.
>Why?
If you read his second post, you can probably figure out why. However, even with the addition of homicides, it only brings the percentage to 1.14%...still below simple vehicular accidents (not including vehicular homicide, which he also forgot to take into account).
Something the 'Brady Bunch' and all the "milita clause" detractors forget to take into account is the fact that according to the United States Code Title 10, Subtitle A, Part I, Chapter 13, Subsection 311:
(a) The militia of the United States consists of all able-bodied males at least 17 years of age and, except as provided in section 313 of title 32, under 45 years of age who are, or who have made a declaration of intention to become, citizens of the United States and of female citizens of the United States who are members of the National Guard.
(b) The classes of the militia are—
(1) the organized militia, which consists of the National Guard and the Naval Militia; and
(2) the unorganized militia, which consists of the members of the militia who are not members of the National Guard or the Naval Militia.
i.e. All males (and by lawful extention females) from 17 to 45 are MEMBERS OF THE MILITIA. Take from that what you will...
