Ah, liberals and their never-ceasing desire to control the rest of us.
On Friday, U.S. District Judge Ricardo M. Urbina, who sits in Washington DC, ruled that he city's onerous and overly-restrictive gun-control laws that the city passed to try to gut the 2008 Heller decision are somehow Constitutionally permitted. The judge ruled that the District's handgun registration process, which requires owners to submit fingerprints and allow police to perform ballistics tests, is constitutional. He also upheld a city ban on most semiautomatic pistols.
Story about the decision here.
The city only allows residents to own revolvers--which must be registered with the police--and it requires that legally registered revolvers be kept unloaded and either disassembled or secured with trigger locks, unless the owner reasonably fears immediate harm by an intruder in the home. Each resident can register one pistol a month, and registrations expire after three years.
Urbina found that the new regulations were crafted to make the streets safer and aren't so restrictive that they violate the Second Amendment guarantee of a person's right to own a gun for self-defense. "It is beyond dispute that public safety is an important -- indeed, a compelling -- governmental interest," Urbina wrote.
Really? If that's the case, then why did that same government just give a thug who brought four guns into a public sports arena and used them to threaten and intimidate someone he was having a disagreement with a slap on the wrist? Why did the thug only get probation if public safety is really all that important in DC? Had it been you or I caught with even one gun on our person or in our vehicle, we'd be in jail there even if there was no underlying criminal issues as there was in this case.
But then again, you and I don't play basketball, so we probably wouldn't qualify for mere probation in lieu of jail.
It's not about public safety at all. It's about control. Safety comes from ensuring that law-abiding citizens cans protect themselves in those instances when the police aren't standing right next to them. Free citizens can protect themselves in most of this country, but in Washington DC, the only ones allowed to have and carry guns are the rich and powerful...and thug basketball players like Gilbert Arenas.
Moral of the story: If you can't dunk a basketball, you're on your own in Washington, DC when the criminals come around. And if you can dunk a basketball? Then you can actually be a criminal in Washington, DC.
Oh, and lest anyone doubt that elections have long-standing consequences, Judge Urbina was appointed to the bench in 1994 by then President Bill Clinton and he's been there ever since, handing down rulings like this one.
Still think your vote doesn't matter? It does, and so does a vote not cast, or one pissed away on some unelectable third-party candidate or fringe lunatic.
Remember in November.
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