Washington D.C.’s Gun Ban Lift: A Major Victory for Gun-Rights Activists
In a HUGE win for gun-rights proponents, a federal judge in the District of Columbia just struck down the city’s total ban on residents being allowed to carry handguns outside their home. Effective immediately.
D.C. police can no longer arrest anyone for carrying a legal gun. Also, any non-D.C. resident who can legally carry in his or her home state (whether open or concealed) can now carry in D.C.
The Washington Times reports:
“The District’s ban on carrying handguns in public was struck down by a federal judge who called the restrictions ‘unconstitutional.’
The decision by Judge Frederick J. Scullin Jr. comes five years after several gun owners joined together to file a lawsuit challenging the District’s gun laws, which only allowed residents to possess a gun in their home or business.
In light of Supreme Court decisions that struck down near total bans on handguns in the District and Chicago in recent years, “there is no longer any basis this Court can conclude that the District of Columbia’s total ban on the public carrying of ready-to-use handguns outside the home is constitutional under any level of scrutiny,” Judge Scullin wrote in an opinion dated Thursday and made public Saturday.”
Until Judge Scullin’s recent landmark decision, Washington D.C. was the only place in the country that had a total ban on the right to bear arms.
A number of studies reveal that, in general, increasingly strict gun-control laws have not been shown to reduce gun crime, and in several places (including Washington, D.C.) they seem to have led to an increase in crime. After all, when a law prohibiting guns is enacted in a city, law-abiding citizens are usually the first ones to turn in their guns, not criminals who are intending to do harm.
