7/15/2008

Vote today by DC City Council on new gun rules

Fox News has this story:

WASHINGTON — The District of Columbia Council planned to vote Tuesday on emergency legislation to allow handguns, but only if they are used for self-defense in the home and carry fewer than 12 rounds of ammunition.

The legislation announced Monday comes as officials try to comply with a U.S. Supreme Court ruling last month striking down the city's 32-year-old weapons ban.

The proposal, which maintains some of the city's strict gun ownership rules and adds more regulations, was immediately criticized by gun rights advocates. They threatened more legal action.


The note about 12 rounds makes me believe that they may allow semi-automatic handguns. I guess we will see tomorrow what they are planning on doing.

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5 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Whether they would allow some semi-autos depends on the exact wording of their rules and, more importantly, how they interpret those words. Massachusetts law classifies any semi-automatic handgun "capable of accepting" a magazine larger than 10 rounds as "large capacity", requiring a different class license to possess. Fortunately, the state backed off from a literal reading of the law, which would have included almost every semi-auto ever made, and limited it to models that the manufacturer originally shipped with a large capacity magazine or those for which the owner has a large capacity magazine. Given their juvenile approach to compliance with constitutional limits on their behavior, I'd expect DC to take a much broader interpretation.

7/15/2008 9:02 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Vision impaired and illiterate need not apply.
Washington D.C. wants to enact new gun laws to "comply" with the Heller Vs. D.C. Decision. They will allow handguns to be registered but they must be locked up..BLAH BLAH BLAH. The problems in the law are many. However, they are considering a Vision test and a written test before one can have a handgun. The Second Amendment, whichch, we know was and is reaffimed to be a right enumerated in the bill of RIGHTS. Now, if we made people take a vision test before they allowed to vote, there would be every bed wetting liberal raising hell. If we are allowed to deny Constitutionally protected rights to the visually challenged, how does that bode for the rest of our rights?

Just wondering?

7/15/2008 2:11 PM  
Blogger W W Woodward said...

The District of Columbia Council is not trying to comply with the Heller decision.

The council is doing its dead-level best to engineer a way around the court's ruling. The criminal element will ignore whatever ordinances the district finally manages to put into place. The only people their legislation will effect will be the same law abiding citizens the draconian ordinances that prompted the original suit penalized.

7/15/2008 2:32 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

FEES for registration, FEES for fingerprinting and photos, FEES for "ballistic testing". Gee, wasn't there something about POLL TAXES and LITERACY TESTS being Unconstitutional "infringements" on the RIGHT to vote?

Also DC says ANY mag fed semi-auto is BANNED because they are "machineguns". And didn't SCOTUS demand that DC register Heller's gun? That gun is a semi-auto.

7/15/2008 3:04 PM  
Blogger John A said...

"The note about 12 rounds makes me believe that they may allow semi-automatic handguns."

Nope, as mentioned on several blogs (and the antigun Violence Policy Center website). If 12 or more rounds can be fired without reloading it defines a machine gun in another DC law. Oh, and the gun need not actually have that capacity while in your possession - if there is any way, no matter how impractical, to hold load more than eleven rounds, it fits the law. So a seven-round Luger becomes a machine gun because there exists a thirty-round "snail drum" magazine, as does a 1911 .45 since there are fifteen-round magazines.

7/15/2008 6:22 PM  

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