Emily Miller went through the D.C. process for legally obtaining a gun. In this article, she mulls over the questions asked on the form the D.C. police require before approving you:
Also, if you’ve ever been convicted of “vagrancyâ€, you’re out of luck. I’m not sure why hanging around the 7-Eleven parking lot too long makes you unqualified to have a gun, but someone in the city government does.
They are also worried about someone who has operated a “bawdy house” from possessing guns. And even after she’s done with this particular form, and gets it notarized, there’s still 17 more steps to go. There is no way we can allow this to stand, and I don’t care what the courts say. After we get HR822, repealing DC’s gun laws and removing the subject of firearms regulation back to Congress needs to become a priority.
It could be argued that Washington D.C. has so few gun owners, this is not a wise use of limited legislative resources, but I disagree. If the D.C. City government had taken the Supreme Court decision in Heller seriously, it easily could have restructured its laws with due respect for the fact that it was a fundamental constitutional right. It chose not to. D.C. chose to see what it could get away with. This charade is now being repeated in Chicago.
I want to set up D.C. as an example, to convince other jurisdictions that it’s better to accept the inevitable than to continue playing games with people’s Constitutional rights. The only way to do that is to say D.C. is bound only by the United States Code and federal regulations when it comes to gun laws, and take their toy away from them by modifying home rule so they can never regulate firearms again. Right now jurisdictions like D.C. and Chicago are betting they can thumb their noses at us with impunity. We have to show them that this is a grave error, and will only result in losing more than they would have if they had just behaved themselves from the beginning.
what the hell is a “bawdy house?”
A brothel. But I’m amused by the use of the term. And what made them center on people who run houses of prostitution?
Close, but no cigar, Sebastian.
I grew up in DC, went to college there and worked in DC for a couple of decades. During that period I battled DC government on nearly every issue associated with “normal living;” I can tell you stories about DC’s mandatory motor vehicle inspection that would have you calling for Arclight raids, and don’t bring up “landlord/tenant court” in my presence. I was constantly amazed that laws of physics worked in DC.
Don’t stop with taking away their ability to regulate firearms – the Constitution stipulates a “federal district” as the seat of the US government, so make it a federal district. Have everything in DC directly under Congress’ control. The people in DC government couldn’t manage a ham sandwich if you chewed and swallowed it for them.
Give everything north of the Potomac River and west of the Anacostia River within a roughly three-mile-square area centered on the Capitol building back to Maryland; nine square miles is plenty big enough for the US government and small enough that Congress can probably successfully manage it.
Only problem is, even the People’s Republic of Maryland isn’t stupid enough to want any of it back.
“It could be argued that Washington D.C. has so few gun owners, this is not a wise use of limited legislative resources, but I disagree.”
D.C.’s laws are one of the reasons it has so few gun owners. If more people had their rights, more would exercise those rights.