That’s the name of a bill in Congress right now that would tell the D.C. city government to take its gun ban and shove it. Unfortunately, it’s stuck in committee despite widespread support, and while I don’t often encourage people to do this, today I’m encouraging all of you to make three phone calls to D.C.
The reason for this is that D.C. has no representative in Congress who can vote one way or the other and thus provide them representation. It’s all of our representatives who, in theory, represent them.
D.C. has suffered under a gun ban for 30 years now. Because of it, crime in the District has flourished, with rates of murder and other violent crimes skyrocketing, and the District competing annually with New York City, Chicago and other cities which also have gun bans for the murder and violent crime capital of the world, a title which seems to be awarded — by the Department of Justice! — only to cities whose citizens are prevented from defending themselves from violent criminals.
Unfortunately, some people still don’t understand that the gun ban is driving up the crime rates. It affects only honest people, not criminals, who can still get guns on the black market, or people without prior records intent on starting one, who can buy them openly wherever there isn’t a gun ban. Thus the disarmed honest people can’t defend themselves from the criminals. San Francisco is about to learn this lesson the hard way, just as D.C., Chicago, New York, Camden, N.J., and many other places have.
The places where people can carry guns openly, or carry concealed, such as Texas and Florida, have seen dramatic drops in violent crime since these measures went into effect and honest citizens could defend themselves, as they are supposed to.
Anyway, back to the issue at hand. The Congress tried to do this last session, but the bill died. This session, the bill might still be rescued from limbo.
Particularly telling is the subtitle of this bill: “To restore Second Amendment rights in the District of Columbia.” The Congressional findings are also quite interesting. Read this:
Congress finds the following:
- The Second Amendment to the United States Constitution provides that the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.
- The Second Amendment to the United States Constitution protects the rights of individuals, including those who are not members of a militia or engaged in military service or training, to keep and bear arms.
- The law-abiding citizens of the District of Columbia are deprived by local laws of handguns, rifles, and shotguns that are commonly kept by law-abiding persons throughout the United States for sporting use and for lawful defense of their persons, homes, businesses, and families.
- The District of Columbia has one of the highest per capita murder rates in the Nation, which may be attributed in part to local laws prohibiting possession of firearms by law-abiding persons who would otherwise be able to defend themselves and their loved ones in their own homes and businesses.
- The Federal Gun Control Act of 1968, as amended by the Firearms Owners’ Protection Act of 1986, and the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act of 1993, provide comprehensive Federal regulations applicable in the District of Columbia as elsewhere. In addition, existing District of Columbia criminal laws punish possession and illegal use of firearms by violent criminals and felons. Consequently, there is no need for local laws which only affect and disarm law-abiding citizens.
- Legislation is required to correct the District of Columbia’s law in order to restore the fundamental rights of its citizens under the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution and thereby enhance public safety.
They just came right out and said what we’ve been trying to tell you all along: Not only do guns in the hands of honest people prevent crime, but the local gun bans are unconstitutional. Extra special thanks to Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas) and Rep. Mark Souder (R-Ind.) for introducing these bills yet again.
Contact your Representative and urge him or her to take action on H.R. 1288, and then contact each of your two Senators and urge them to take action on S. 1082. Bonus points if your Representative and Senators actually sit on the comittees holding up these bills.
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Jason
Feb 19, 2006
There’s a stupid joke begging to be made here.
Something along the lines of, there’s a gun ban in D.C., and Cheney still managed to shoot someone.
Bill
Feb 19, 2006
You may want to double check your stats–according to the FBI report linked above New York City metro area (narrowly defined to account for the policy) has a lower violent crime rate per 100k (582) than any Florida city of size, broadly defined (Miami-812, Tampa-785, Orlando-754) and several small ones (Tallahassee-763, Ocala-704). Florida has among the loosest gun laws in the country, including a “stand your ground” safe harbor for killing someone who threatens you.
Considering the volume of tourists that both places see, the data are fairly comparable and provides a good comparison of the two ends of the policy.
The Texas numbers cast further doubt on the comparison. Dallas doesn’t see nearly as many tourists who are always vulnerable to crime as New York, yet has a slightly higher violent crime rate (614); Houston’s is considerably higher (723).
I like the site, but this sloppy reasoning is suggestive that the evidence that this particular infringement on freedom has something to do with the crime rate is quite overblown and undermines your other, better, posts.
Michael Hampton
Feb 19, 2006
Bill, the statistics you quote encompass the entire metro areas in question, rather than simply those covered by the gun bans. For instance, in the case of “New York City,” that number counts fairly heavily populated parts of suburban and rural New York north of the city which have a far lower rate of crime and thus drag the numbers down.
Unfortunately, all of the areas in question suffer from the same problem with respect to trying to analyze what effect a gun ban has. When I get some time I’ll dig up some more appropriate numbers, if you really feel you must see them.
But if you don’t believe numbers, and it’s easy not to since anyone can make them say anything they want, as you’ve demonstrated, ask the convicts. They will tell you virtually every time that they wouldn’t have even tried to commit the crime if they’d thought the victim might be armed.
Bill
Feb 20, 2006
Your post put the crime statistics at issue as support, and I’m genuinely interested in whether there’s any data to support this argument. My suspicion is there’s really no data either way.
FWIW, I used the metro area table for easy comparison with NYC as narrowly defined as possible using those stats (table 4 of the 2004 FBI violent crime report available through your link). Because Florida cities are rather small relative to their metro areas, and their crime numbers tend to skew higher, the comparison is as good for your point as possible.
To be precise, Table 8 has a straight city-city comparison. There, using a little back of envelope math, it appears the per 100k violent crime numbers (violent crimes/population, then *100k) would be NYC (687), Miami (1677), Tampa (1594), Orlando (1748).
The Texas cities may be more representative relative to their metro areas, but don’t help your argument: Dallas (1315), Houston (1146).
Your best counterargument is DC, which has a relatively high violent crime rate (1325 by the table used above) and a handgun ban, as you explain above. However, it’s comparable to the Texas and Florida cities, way higher than NYC, so it doesn’t really make your point. Instead, it’s more of a control that NYC’s gun ban probably doesn’t play a role in its relatively low crime rate.
If you have better numbers, please link to those.
The problem is for a criminal to think people might be armed in any one instance, nearly everyone has to be armed because crime is so (relatively) rare (even in the “high crime” areas, we’re talking around 1 in 1000).
Gun bans, or gun rights, frankly, don’t make a lick of difference and are just a distraction to figuring out how best to reduce crime in the real world. But whatever it is, New York appears to be onto something.
Jun 10, 2006
Murder Capital - Homeland Stupidity
Jennifer Dennis
Dec 02, 2006
Basically, they are spitting on the Constitution of the United Stated of America and that pisses me off. How is it that the government, who is supposed to be bound by and protect the Constitutional rights of its people, can so completely ignore it? The Constitution was written for a reason and that reason has escaped the minds of our leaders. I believe in gun control. I believe that guns should not be sold to children. I believe that anyone who wants to purchase a gun should have to go through a training course. You had to take a test on vehicle operation and safety before you got your driver’s license, didn’t you? I don;t think that’s unreasonable. But completely taking away one’s Constitutional right is out of line entirely.
Anonymous
Feb 09, 2007
There have been a lot of great posts on here. But I think this whole thing can be simplified with a little imagination….
Lets say that the anti-gunners win, and every lawful citizen turns in their guns, what about the unlawful ones? Imagine in this world you are sitting at home with your family and an armed criminal kicks in your front door wielding an illegal 12 Gauge shotgun. The fact that he is holding an illegal shotgun will not stop him from blowing holes in you with it. BUT if you had a way to defend yourself (other then harsh language) you could potentially save yourself and your family.
In the world we currently live in that criminal would have to think twice before entering your home as he may be running into the wrong end of a shotgun himself. The same can be said for mugging and rapes and murder. If more people carried concealed handguns, and used them when they were forced too, crime would go down, period. Criminals talk to each other. And if a larger percentage of criminals got put down lawfully by CHL holders, I promise you it will get criminals attention.
The only problem with CHL is the same as the Death Penalty. It is simply not utilized enough to be a major deterrent of crime. So rather then discouraging an effective weapon against crime, and ignoring one of the most fundamental rights that our forefathers guaranteed us, shouldn’t we be encouraging it?
I’ll end this post with a simple illustration. If just ONE person was armed with a CHL and took action in the Luby’s in Killeen, TX when a madman came in and killed 23 and wounded 20 more people, 43 people wouldn’t have to be shot right now.
It’s your life, if you don’t protect it, who will?
Mar 09, 2007
D.C. handgun ban found unconstitutional - Homeland Stupidity