Nov20

Newsflash: Law-breakers do not obey the law

by Duane on November 20th, 2007 at 3:23 am
Posted In: Uncategorized

Those the constantly push for stiffer laws to limit our second amendment right to bear arms are forgetting one thing: Bad guys never follow the law in the first place. While John Q. Public has to go through seemingly never-ending red tape to apply for a gun, bad guys have been getting their guns by other means for years. Too bad, cities like Washington D.C. are learning this lesson the hard way.

Effectiveness of D.C. gun ban still a mystery

By Paul Duggan

The Washington Post

WASHINGTON – Three decades ago, at the dawn of municipal self-government in the District of Columbia, the city’s first elected mayor and council enacted one of the country’s toughest gun-control measures, a ban on handgun ownership that opponents have long said violates the Second Amendment.

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All these years later, with the constitutionality of the ban now probably headed for a US Supreme Court review, a much-debated practical question remains unsettled: Has a law aimed at reducing the number of handguns in the District made city streets safer?

Although studies through the decades have reached conflicting conclusions, this much is clear: The ban, passed with strong public support in 1976, has not accomplished everything the mayor and council of that era wanted it to.

Over the years, gun violence has continued to plague the city, reaching staggering levels at times.

In making by far their boldest public policy decision, Washington’s first elected officials wanted other jurisdictions, especially neighboring states, to follow the lead of the nation’s capital by enacting similar gun restrictions, cutting the flow of firearms into the city from surrounding areas.

“We were trying to send out a message,” recalled Sterling Tucker, the council chairman at the time.

Nadine Winters, also a council member then, said, “My expectation was that this being Washington, it would kind of spread to other places, because these guns, there were so many of them coming from Virginia and Maryland.”

It didn’t happen. Guns kept coming. And bodies kept falling. (more…)