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Supreme Court Strikes Down DC Gun Ban

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The Supreme Court has ruled that the District of Columbia's 32-year-old handgun ban is unconstitutional. Read our coverage of the gun ban, and take a poll on if you agree or disagree with the decision.

Comments

I think it’s interesting that the poll results are almost 50-50, with the "yes" response having a slight lead. Not at all what I was expecting!

Posted by: Emily [at Washingtonian.com] | Jun 27, 2008 09:17:21 AM

Go Supreme Court!

Posted by: progun | Jun 26, 2008 07:45:14 PM

This decision of the Surpremes pushes the button for "hot" reactions, but this should not divert us from quickly focusing with intensity on addressing with available methods the out of control gun violence in D.C. and across the country.

What works for preventing gun violence that can still be used? What does careful and considered analyses indicate offers promise for preventing gun violence? Let’s identify and then enact these policies for D.C., make sure that these laws move from the books to practice, and evaluate these laws rigorously for impact so we can keep what is effective, refine what is promising but could benefit from improvement, and discard what isn’t working. For example, a promising approach appears to me to be substantial penalties for having a concealed weapon without a permit and for possession or use of a gun during the perpetation of a crime. The Council and the Mayor need to put relevant law on the books. Then police need to make arrests for such offenses, DAs need to prosecute these offenses in court, and Judges need to administer meaningful consequences. (A recent Washingtonian story indicated that there is opportunity for substantial improvement in implementing this focus.)

There might usefully be a Federal-D.C. partnership for researching possible avenues to pursue, for implementation, and for rigorous and adequate evaluation of the contributions of various methods toward the objective of obtaining a downward trend in the rate of gun violence and the goal of making D.C. the national capital with the lowest rate of gun violence.

Another tack is for all elected officials, Federal and district, with secruity and who reside in the DIstrict, beginning with whoever is elected President, to make a high rate of visits on all the days of the weeks and at a range of day and night hours to the "hot spots" for gun violence in D.C. The security for these officials should "spill over" to the law abiding and long suffering residents. In particular, the security "bubble" for the President should have an exraordinarily strong umbrella effect for preventing gun violence in and around these "hot spots." If this works as well as I think it might, a next step would be to extend the protective "bubble" to D.C. citizens 24/7.

While the "hot spots" of urban areas are where gun violence is at the highest rate, gun violence also occurs broadly across the nation, even in seemingly quite and safe rural areas. Our there, hunters can be a problem, too. I enjoy hunting, but hunters need to respect private property and not minick DIck Cheney in endangering others when firing their weapons. From my years living in rural America, I know of many stories of hunters disregarding No Trespassing signs and violating the rights of the property owners (if the hunters want their rights to have a gun respected,they should equally respect private property rights). Worse, hunters have discharged their weapons so as to endanger the residents who Posted their property (made it ooff limits to hunters), e.g., a bullet fired by a trespassing hunter smashed through a window and lodged above the kitchen stove (luckily, the woman in the kitchen had just moved away from the stove). Shades of D.C. in rural Iowa. Unacceptable everywhere.

Let’s all unite now for effective action to prevent gun violence.

Posted by: Jim Breiling | Jun 26, 2008 03:18:00 PM

i think the ban was unconstitutional but that doesn’t make it a good thing. everybody duck.

Posted by: cleaman | Jun 26, 2008 09:12:12 AM

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