7/18/2008

A new Heller lawsuit on the way?

Classifying a semi-automatic handgun as a machine gun? I know that I saw this coming, but still this is banning the vast majority of handguns owned by Americans.

WASHINGTON (WUSA) -- District residents can start registering their guns today. But at least one very high profile application was already rejected.

Dick Heller is the man who brought the lawsuit against the District's 32-year-old ban on handguns. He was among the first in line Thursday morning to apply for a handgun permit.

But when he tried to register his semi-automatic weapon, he says he was rejected. He says his gun has seven bullet clip. Heller says the City Council legislation allows weapons with fewer than eleven bullets in the clip. A spokesman for the DC Police says the gun was a bottom-loading weapon, and according to their interpretation, all bottom-loading guns are outlawed because they are grouped with machine guns.

Besides obtaining paperwork to buy new handguns, residents also can register firearms they've had illegally under a 180-day amnesty period.

Though residents will be allowed to begin applying for handgun permits, city officials have said the entire process could take weeks or months.


Thanks to many readers for sending me this type of article, including Todd P, Gus Cotey, and Jason Mullner.

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2 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

So bottom-loading handguns are illegal? I wonder what they'd say to a C96 Mauser? I guess they'd reject it because the magazine is ahead of the trigger.
Typical.

7/18/2008 10:46 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Their theory is that a bottom loader can take a larger magazine, and whether such a product exists or not, the capability of a standard semi-auto pistol to take a larger magazine means it's a "machine gun"...which they trace somehow back to a 1932 federal law before home rule. Anything to hamper the process and force more time and money to be wasted on a lost cause.
Doug in colorado

7/18/2008 12:58 PM  

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