The DC Gun Ban is officially euthanized as of today.

I said “officially”. 

Because I think Dick Heller’s gonna be back in court sooner than later:

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.

Look for DC to try to run out the clock – at taxpayer’s expense, and without an actual end to the game – trying to give the Second Amendment the death of a thousand paperwork cuts.

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

“I’m shocked, shocked to see that the District of Columbia believes it’s above the Supreme Court”.   

Back to court, with copy of Scalia’s opinion in hand, baby:

We think that limitation is fairly supported by the historical tradition of prohibiting the carrying of “dangerous and unusual weapons.”… It may be objected that if weapons that are most useful in military service—M-16 rifles and the like—may be banned, then the Second Amendment right is completely detached from the prefatory clause. But as we have said, the conception of the militia at the time of the Second Amendment’s ratification was the body of all citizens capable of military service, who would bring the sorts of lawful weapons that they possessed at home to militia duty. It may well be true today that a militia, to be as effective as militias in the 18th century, would require sophisticated arms that are highly unusual in society at large. Indeed, it may be true that no amount of small arms could be useful against modern-day bombers and tanks. But the fact that modern developments have limited the degree of fit between the prefatory clause and the protected right cannot change our interpretation of the right.

Perhaps Heller should try to register one of these, as a big FU to DC.

Hey, it’s not bottom-loading…

This entry was posted by by Mitch Berg on Friday, July 18th, 2008 at 6:54 am and is filed under Progressive Tyranny, SCOTUS, Victim Disarmament. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.