Supreme Court to Rule on DC Gun Ban

Someone I know served on a DC jury a couple of weeks ago in a gun case. The accused, a 60-something used car salesman, had been stopped and frisked on the street. The police found a gun. He was arrested, and released on bail. A couple of weeks later, after meeting with his attorney, he remembered that he had been on his way to turn in the gun to a DC police officer. At the trial, a DC police officer testified to this effect. So, the jury declared the defendant "not guilty." DC law permits someone to possess a gun if he intends to turn it in to the police. After acquittal, the prosecutor and defense attorney briefed the jury on the defendant's background--he had prior arrests for attempted murder and other crimes, but no convictions.

My personal verdict: the DC gun law is pointless. More from Tom Knott in the Washington Times today:

The U.S. Supreme Court's justices are making noises that suggest they will restore the Second Amendment rights to residents of the nation's capital, as they should be.

The D.C. Council imposed a handgun ban on its citizenry in 1976, ostensibly to save lives. The measure has not worked out as envisioned, predictably enough.

The nation's capital earned the dubious distinction of being the nation's murder capital in the early '90s, when the violence spiked because of the crack epidemic. The number of murders in the city peaked at 479 in 1991. There were 181 murders in the city last year, with more and more neighborhoods in the city undergoing gentrification and some of the violent crime spilling over into Prince George's County.

This is the demographic reality that no city lawmaker is apt to utter in public. City lawmakers are more apt to blame the murder rate on the easy accessibility of handguns in Maryland and Virginia, a thin argument that ignores the vagaries of the human condition. If a gang member or drug dealer wants a handgun, regardless of the law, you can be certain he can make a quick call to secure one in short order.

Not that the nine justices are inclined to make their ruling based on an interpretation of the murder statistics of the city. Theirs is a higher pursuit of the Constitution, of what the Framers actually intended with the Second Amendment, whether its reference to service in a militia extends to individuals having a right to bear arms.