DC: The Gun Ban that Misfired
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DC gun ban experience is worth a review. Here providing just such an
analysis is a former DC prosecutor who is ”wary of strict firearms
laws.”
the wake of the horrific elementary-school shootings in Newtown, Conn.,
last month, many Americans, desperate to do something in response, have
decided that much stricter gun control is the answer. Democrats have
proposed reinstating the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban, and Sen. Dianne
Feinstein has proposed legislation that would even restrict the use of
some semiautomatic handguns.
a press conference Wednesday, President Obama called his gun control
proposals ‘common sense measures’ and emphasized his support of the
Second Amendment, saying, “I respect our strong tradition of gun
ownership.”
As
a former prosecutor in Washington, D.C., who enforced firearms and
ammunition cases while a severe local gun ban was still in effect, I am
skeptical of the benefits that many imagine will result from additional
gun-control efforts. I dislike guns, but I believe that a nationwide
firearms crackdown would place an undue burden on law enforcement and
endanger civil liberties while potentially increasing crime.
The D.C. gun ban, enacted in 1976, prohibited anyone other than
law-enforcement officers from carrying a firearm in the city. Residents
were even barred from keeping guns in their homes for self-defense.
Some
in Washington who owned firearms before the ban were allowed to keep
them as long as the weapons were disassembled or trigger-locked at all
times. According to the law, trigger locks could not be removed for
self-defense even if the owner was being robbed at gunpoint. The only
way anyone could legally possess a firearm in the District without a
trigger lock was to obtain written permission from the D.C. police. The
granting of such permission was rare.
The
gun ban had an unintended effect: It emboldened criminals because they
knew that law-abiding District residents were unarmed and powerless to
defend themselves. Violent crime increased after the law was enacted,
with homicides rising to 369 in 1988, from 188 in 1976 when the ban
started. By 1993, annual homicides had reached 454.
Washington, D.C., Metropolitan Police Department also waged a war on
firearms by creating a special Gun Recovery Unit in 1995. The campaign
meant that officers were obliged to spend time searching otherwise
law-abiding citizens. That same year, the department launched a
crackdown called Operation Cease Fire to rid the District of illegal
firearms. But after four months, officers had confiscated only 282 guns
out of the many thousands in the city.
Civil
liberties were endangered. Legislative changes empowered judges to hold
gun suspects in pretrial detention without bond for up to 100 days, and
efforts were made to enact curfews and seize automobiles found to
contain firearms. In 1997, Police Chief Charles Ramsey disbanded the
unit so that he could assign more uniformed officers to patrol the
streets instead, but the police periodically tried other gun crackdowns
over the next decade—with little effect.
In
2007, a panel for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled
that the city’s gun ban was unconstitutional. Senior Judge Laurence H.
Silberman wrote in the majority opinion that “the black market for
handguns in the District is so strong that handguns are readily
available (probably at little premium) to criminals. It is asserted,
therefore that the D.C. gun control laws irrationally prevent only law
abiding citizens from owning handguns.”
The ruling was affirmed the following year by the Supreme Court in District of Columbia v. Heller.
Justice Antonin Scalia’s majority opinion said that citizens were
guaranteed a right to keep firearms that were in common use in their
homes for self-defense, but that the government could pass reasonable
regulations concerning firearms and ammunition.
Heller
created a panic among gun-control advocates because it condoned the
ownership of semiautomatic handguns, which are among the most common
firearms in use but also the target of many restriction efforts.
Supporters of the District gun ban maintained that because a
semiautomatic handgun could potentially be converted into a machine
gun—a class of firearms not expressly protected by Heller—they
were in fact machine guns and therefore not protected by the Second
Amendment. In response, Congress threatened to pass a law that specified
the legality of semiautomatic handguns in the District. To avoid the
embarrassment of being dictated to by Congress, the D.C. Council passed
emergency legislation in September 2008 amending the gun ban to allow
ownership of semiautomatic handguns for home defense.
Since
the gun ban was struck down, murders in the District have steadily gone
down, from 186 in 2008 to 88 in 2012, the lowest number since the law
was enacted in 1976. The decline resulted from a variety of factors, but
losing the gun ban certainly did not produce the rise in murders that
many might have expected.
The
urge to drastically restrict firearms after mass murders like those at
Sandy Hook Elementary School last month and in Aurora, Colo., in July,
is understandable. In effect, many people would like to apply the
District’s legal philosophy on firearms to the entire nation. Based on
what happened in Washington, I think that would be a mistake. Any sense
of safety and security would be a false one.
Mr. Shapiro was a criminal prosecutor for the District of Columbia from 2007-09.
version of this article appeared January 16, 2013, on page A11 in the
U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: A Gun Ban That Misfired.
Posted: 17 Jan 2013 11:41 AM PST
shameless exploitation of children as set pieces is hardly new or
original. In fact, tyrants and dictators have used kids as props down
through the ages.
2013-01-17 21:30:28
Source: http://blog.stoptaxingus.com/2013/01/17/dc-the-gun-ban-that-misfired.aspx?ref=rss
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