Gun Politics (as Usual) in D.C.

[This blog is a report by CSGV Director of Communications Ladd Everitt, who attended a D.C. Council hearing yesterday on the “Firearms Amendment Act of 2011.”]

Yesterday, I attended a public hearing of the D.C. Council’s Committee on the Judiciary regarding a new piece of gun-related legislation, Bill 19-614, the “Firearms Amendment Act of 2011.” The hearing provided a perfect snapshot of the way gun politics operate in the District, with the usual cast of characters in lead roles on the pro-gun side.

Everyone is familiar with the District of Columbia’s tough gun laws, but the “Firearms Amendment Act” would actually address many of the criticisms of pro-gun activists and eliminate some existing regulations. Specifically, Bill 19-614 would:

• Allow D.C. residents to take their guns to firearms safety and training courses before they have officially registered them with the city.


• Eliminate the vision testing requirement to register a firearm. Those who are legally blind would still be prohibited from registering firearms.


• Accept military training, or the possession of a state firearms license for which comparable training was required, to satisfy the District’s mandatory training requirement to register a firearm.


• Repeal the requirement that registered handguns undergo ballistics identification testing.


• Require the Metropolitan Police to take photographs for use in the registration application process, rather than requiring applicants to supply their own photographs.

All of these changes were initiated by Judiciary Committee Chairman Phil Mendelson (D-At Large), who sought to accommodate pro-gun activists in the District after meeting with them personally to hear their concerns. You never would have known that sitting through yesterday’s hearing, however. Pro-gun activists spent the morning and afternoon browbeating Mendelson and issuing additional demands in a manner that was frequently impolite and sometimes downright rude.

First up to testify was Emily "I'm meh on voting rights" Miller, the Senior Editor of the Washington Times Opinion pages (which embrace even the most bizarre conspiracy theories perpetuated by the NRA) . Miller has become something of a cause célèbre in the pro-gun movement because of her “Emily Gets Her Gun” blog at the Times website. The blog basically gives Miller a platform to complain about D.C. gun laws ad nauseam. But there are fun features for people who really like weapons, too, like gun porn photos and a poll that allows them to vote on which semiautomatic handgun Emily should buy to take down “bad guys” with.

Miller spent about 20 minutes at the hearing complaining about the process needed to satisfy the training requirement for registering handguns in the District, which is strange, because she successfully completed that training more than two months ago, and Bill 19-614 would make it even easier for future applicants to do so. Nonetheless she made it clear to Chairman Mendelson that the list of 46 certified firearms instructors supplied by the Metropolitan Police Department (MPDC) was grossly insufficient. Why? Because she did not want to travel to the home/office of one of these “armed strange men” and put herself at personal risk to undergo the training. [Miller was presumably referring to pro-gun activist Ricardo Royal, one of the 46 who was on hand to testify.]

Let me get this straight… Miller is scared to spend a few hours with a firearms instructor that’s been certified by the MPDC (i.e., multiple, thorough background checks), but thinks she’ll be safer if the “strange men” of Washington, D.C. can arm themselves under far less stringent oversight? At the hearing, Miller praised Virginia laws that allow someone to walk out of a store with a handgun in just 10 minutes, no training required. “It’s much easier to shoot a gun than drive a car,” she told Mendelson. “Anyone can do it.” Except perhaps Miller. She inadvertently revealed that she has sometimes violated the basic rules of firearms safety that were taught to her by instructors (e.g., by placing her finger on the trigger of a gun before she was prepared to fire it).

Miller also showed little grasp of facts, boasting at one point that “gun ownership is at its highest [level] in 30 years.” In reality, data from the General Social Survey tells us exactly the opposite—that only one in five Americans now owns a firearm.

Finally, Miller apparently associates with criminals. “Anecdotally, a lot of people have come up to me and said, ‘I have a gun, I don’t register it,’” she told Mendelson. So much for that “law-abiding citizens” thing the NRA likes to shout about.



Back to the topic of “strange men,” the next pro-gun activist to testify, James Collier, told Mendelson that he wanted the city to legalize the civilian version of the military’s M-16 rifle (the semiautomatic-fire-only AR-15) so he could shoot feral pigs in the swamps of South Carolina with it. No, I didn’t make that up.

George Lyon, the President of the D.C. Chapter of the Community Association for Firearms Education (CAFE), said he needed to carry a loaded handgun while walking his dog at 1:00AM. The dog wasn’t on hand to offer his own view about the wisdom of such behavior.

NRA Lifetime Member/Plaintiff Absalom Jordan compared D.C.’s elected officials to Virginians who sought to keep schools segregated from the 1950s-70s. He also falsely accused Mendelson of offering Bill 19-614 only because of the threat of gun lobby litigation—which was later rebutted by pro-gun witnesses.

But the strangest man of all is Dick Heller, the lead plaintiff in the Cato Institute lawsuit that overturned D.C.’s handgun ban in 2008 (the five Supreme Court Justices who wrote the D.C. v. Heller opinion are the same five who decided corporations have a right to free speech in Citizens United). Heller’s testimony took the form of a bizarre presentation on “Firearms Development” in which he showed Mendelson multiple home-printed photos of guns. During this presentation, Heller claimed that the AR-15 assault rifle is “the most safest rifle…to use” and proudly told a story about how his friend in West Virginia bought his five-year-old daughter a pink AR-15. Heller also expressed support for allowing D.C. residents to carry loaded, concealed handguns in public with no screening or training, including on college campuses.

Heller didn’t want to talk much about his current lawsuit against the District of Columbia, which has gone nowhere. As Daniel Vice, the Senior Attorney for the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, noted at the hearing, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit has upheld D.C.’s licensing/registration laws and its assault weapons ban in Heller II, writing, “none of the District’s registration requirements prevents an individual from possessing a firearm in his home or elsewhere.”

For more information on Dick Heller, visit the Heller Foundation website, where Heller supports voter suppression backed up by the threat of political violence, claims the American Nazi Party is supporting the Occupy Wall Street movement, and quotes virulent racist/insurrectionist Jeff Cooper. To put it simply, the fact that longstanding, democratically-enacted gun laws in the District were overturned on this man’s behalf is nothing short of shameful.

Not a single pro-gun witness thanked Chairman Mendelson for sitting down with them, listening to their concerns, and offering the “Firearms Amendment Act of 2011.” They were there only to harangue him and make additional demands.

Like Mendelson, MPDC Police Chief Cathy Lanier stood in stark contrast to the pro-gunners with her willingness to listen, reach compromise, and accommodate. In her testimony at the hearing, Chief Lanier defended the city’s licensing-registration process, laying out four ways that it helps preserve public safety: 1) It allows law enforcement to verify the eligibility of firearm owners; 2) It ensures that firearm owners have a body of knowledge about D.C. gun laws and firearms safety; 3) It allows police to quickly distinguish between legal and illegal firearms in the field; 4) It helps track firearms that have been lost, stolen or used in a crime.

But Lanier also suggested several ways that the process can be made more convenient for gun owners. She said the department believes it can use information technology to eliminate subsequent visits to MPDC for background checks when registrants renew their licenses. She also was open to revisiting training requirements, suggesting that classes can be shorter and conducted at MPDC facilities. Finally, the MPDC is now providing office space for Federal Firearms Licensee Charles Sykes, so registrants no longer have to make multiple trips between his office and MPDC headquarters.

But the bottom line is that since January 2009, only 2,115 total firearms have been registered in the District of Columbia. Mendelson had it exactly right when he said at the hearing, “People in the district, it’s an urban environment, there isn’t a lot of hunting in the city … Within the culture of the city, [there is] not as much of a desire to have guns as was thought or speculated.”

We should salute Mendelson and other D.C. Council members for being willing to listen to all D.C. residents and consider all points of view, no matter how extreme. That’s democracy at work. At the same time, we should be aware that pro-gun activists do not appreciate such gestures and will not stop until they have imposed their far-right-wing political values on our city and eradicated our gun laws entirely—even if/when this involves voiding the democratic decisions of D.C. residents. Monday simply provided additional evidence of that unfortunate fact.

[To watch a full video of the hearing, click here. Dick Heller’s testimony starts at the 3:29:40 mark and is worth watching.]

The Myth of the "Black Market"

The cities of Washington, D.C. and Chicago have been under siege in recent months by the National Rifle Association (NRA), which is attempting to overturn gun laws in both jurisdictions.

The NRA’s battle with Chicago has been in the courts, where the gun lobby is seeking to have the Supreme Court’s Second Amendment ruling in the case of D.C. V. Heller incorporated at the state level. This would have the practical effort of repealing Chicago’s handgun ban. After the 7^th Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the NRA’s lawsuit, it appears headed to the Supreme Court on appeal.

D.C. v. Heller, of course, already repealed the District of Columbia’s handgun ban, but the Supreme Court’s ruling did not go far enough for the NRA. They are now seeking to have the city’s new, constitutional gun laws repealed through an amendment that was initially attached to the “D.C. House Voting Rights Act” by Senator John Ensign (R-NV). That bill has yet to be considered by the House of Representatives, and the amendment’s next likely target is the D.C. appropriations bill, which Congress will likely take up this summer.

Time and time again, the NRA has blamed violence in the two cities on their tough laws, despite evidence that shows that criminals are totally unable to acquire firearms inside Chicago and Washington. So why is it so easy for criminals and gun traffickers to get firearms outside the borders of cities? A fascinating new essay by David Kairys, a professor of Law at Temple University, provides some answers.

The essay, entitled “Why are Handguns So Accessible on Urban Streets?” is a chapter in the new book Against the Wall: Poor, Young, Black and Male. Kairys argues that we need to avoid a “pervasive acceptance and strange sense that the extraordinary level of death and killing is a normal or inevitable aspect of life in urban America,” and that only after understanding why guns are so readily available in cities can we begin to correct the problem.

Kairys explains that “the market makes new handguns so easily available—often for less than one hundred dollars new, right out of the box—that it makes no sense to steal one.” In fact, “anyone who does not have a record can go to a licensed gun store in most states, legally buy as many handguns as he or she wants, and walk out the door with them.” Kairys also points out that there are no “meaningful limits on the resale of handguns,” because private individuals, unlike federally licensed gun dealers, are not required to run Brady background checks on purchasers.

In Kairys’ words: “The bottom line is this. Under federal law and the law of most states, any person so inclined can buy huge quantities of cheap, easily concealed handguns and sell them to others indiscriminately, often without violating any law and usually without having to worry about getting arrested, prosecuted or convicted. Nor are the identities of owners of handguns, or the persons to whom they transfer ownership, registered or maintained by government, unless state law so provides—and most do not.” Capitalizing on this weak regulation, gun manufacturers produce “more guns than could be sold to law-abiding people,” knowing full well their product will be distributed to criminals and other prohibited purchasers downstream.

So what can we do to address this problem? Kairys advocates for registering handguns and licensing handgun owners; adopting strong, clear and specific “straw purchase” laws that make all of the parties to a straw purpose criminally and civilly responsible; limiting multiple purchases of handguns in a given period; and providing large urban areas with the authority to regulate handguns within their borders. All of these measures would help to reduce the flow of handguns to criminals on America’s streets.

But most importantly, we must learn to overcome our own misconceptions of the problem. As Kairys writes, “the common image of an underground, illegal market is largely fictional.” The ability of dangerous people to easily obtain guns is the result of our weak gun laws, which do little to regulate the firearms industry. The good news? Significant progress can be made in reducing gun violence as soon as our elected officials are made to realize that “the loss of life, the economic and social costs, and the undermining of the safety and the quality of life in America are unacceptable.”

“One should ask, what do guns have to do with credit cards?”

On Tuesday, the House of Representatives gave final approval to a dangerous, non-germane amendment that was attached to the "Credit Cardholders’ Bill of Rights Act of 2009" by Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK). The amendment, drafted by the National Rifle Association (NRA), would allow individuals to carry loaded semiautomatic handguns, assault rifles and shotguns into America’s National Parks as long as the firearm is in compliance with state law. The House approved the amendment by a vote of 279-147 (with 105 Democrats voting for it). The amendment had previously passed in the Senate by a vote of 67-29 (with 27 Democrats voting for it).

The Coburn Amendment would override a regulation that was enacted by the Reagan Administration that requires visitors to keep guns stored and unloaded when traveling through National Park lands. It has been opposed by every living and former director of the National Park Service, ranger organizations, retired superintendents, and environmental groups. In a joint statement issued by the National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA), the Coalition of National Park Service Retirees, the Association of National Park Rangers, and the U.S. Park Rangers Lodge of the Fraternal Order of Police, NPCA Executive Vice President Theresa Pierno said of Congress and President Barack Obama: “By not taking a stand to prevent this change, they have sacrificed public safety and national park resources in favor of the political agenda of the National Rifle Association.” The amendment would create an enforcement nightmare for park rangers attempting to enforce gun laws in National Parks that straddle several different states.

Senator Coburn’s amendment is even more extreme than a last-minute rule issued by the Bush Administration that would have allowed individuals to carry concealed handguns in National Parks. The Bush administration moved forward with the rule despite the fact that 73% of the 140,000 people who voiced their opinions during a public comment period opposed it. In March of this year, the United States District Court issued an injunction against the implementation of the Bush rule. Judge Colleen Kollar-Ketally found that the Bush administration’s rulemaking process was “astoundingly flawed” because they “abdicated their [National Environmental Policy Act] obligations” and “ignored substantial information in the administrative record concerning environmental impacts.” Senator Coburn has also purposely avoided the environmental review process set up to protect the Parks.

Senator Coburn says his amendment “is about protecting every American’s Second Amendment rights” and he claims, “Whether it is meth labs hidden amid lush forests or car prowls at trailheads, park rangers and forest officers are seeing an increasing amount of criminal behavior.”

The senator is apparently not familiar with the Supreme Court’s June 2008 decision in the controversial Second Amendment case of District of Columbia v. Heller. Writing for the five conservative justices in the majority in the ruling, Justice Antonin Scalia stated:

Like most rights, the Second Amendment right is not unlimited. It is not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose: For example, concealed weapons prohibitions have been upheld under the Amendment or state analogues. The Court’s opinion should not be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms.

Senator Coburn also wildly exaggerated the threat of violence in our National Parks. The truth is—like other gun free zones—they are some of the safest places in the United States. According to the FBI's Uniform Crime Report, there were only 1.65 violent crimes per 100,000 National Park visitors in 2006. That can be contrasted with an overall national violent crime rate of 469.2 victims per 100,000 citizens in 2005.

The legislation has now moved to President Barack Obama’s desk. Concerned citizens can contact the White House at (202) 456-1111 to urge President Obama to veto H.R. 627 and demand a clean bill from Congress minus the Coburn Amendment. It was just last year that the president publicly stated, "I am not in favor of concealed weapons. I think that creates a potential atmosphere where more innocent people could (get shot during) altercations." Americans should hold him to his word and indicate that the safety of their families is not a political commodity to be sacrificed.

For additional information, read this statement from CSGV Executive Director Josh Horwitz and see NPCA’s “Keep Parks Safe” webpage.

Insurrectionism Goes "Mainstream"

For years, the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence (CSGV) has warned Americans about the dangers of insurrectionist ideology: the idea that individuals have the “right,” in the words of National Rifle Association (NRA) CEO Wayne LaPierre, “to take whatever measures necessary, including force, to abolish oppressive government.” CSGV has argued that not only does insurrectionism degrade the democratic values and institutions that protect the freedoms that we enjoy as Americans; it also poses a direct threat to the very existence of our constitutional democracy.

13 years after the Oklahoma City bombing, insurrectionism was in the national headlines again this month. On April 4, 23 year-old Neo-Nazi gun enthusiast Richard Poplawski shot and killed three police officers who were responding to a 911 call at his home in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Poplawski was equipped with an AK-47-style assault rifle and a bulletproof vest and ambushed the officers as they entered the house.

Details about Poplawski’s extreme political beliefs emerged quickly. His self-professed “best friend” Edward Perkovic told reporters that Poplawski feared “the Obama gun ban that’s on its way” and “didn’t like our rights being infringed upon.” Perkovic also commented that Poplawski carried out the shooting because “if anyone tried to take his firearms, he was gonna’ stand by what his forefathers told him to do.” Like the central character in The Turner Diaries, Poplawski blended overt racism with his gun rights activism. In posts on the Neo-Nazi website Stormfront, he stated his belief that “Evil Zionists” controlled the U.S. government and described African Americans as “vile.” Poplawski felt those of like mind were running out of time to “[take] back the nation” and noted that “a revolutionary is always regarded as a nutcase at first.”

It might be tempting to see Poplawski’s views as simply the ravings of a lone madman, but the truth is far more disturbing. Poplawski’s insurrectionist ideology—once the sole province of militia and hate groups in the United States—has now found its way into the highest levels of government and media, creating serious concerns about the violence that could result.

For starters, the philosophy has been embraced by the Supreme Court. In the recent case of District of Columbia v. Heller, the NRA argued in an amicus brief that “the Second Amendment refers to the utility of an armed population in preventing government tyranny.” The 5-4 majority opinion by the Court not only endorsed the NRA’s “individual right” interpretation of the amendment; it also affirmed “the existence of a ‘citizens’ militia’ as a safeguard against tyranny.

The politics of violence soon spread to the legislative branch. Congresswoman Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) recently stated that she wants residents of her state to be “armed and dangerous on this issue of the energy tax because we need to fight back. Thomas Jefferson told us ‘having a revolution every now and then is a good thing,’ and the people—we the people—are going to have to fight back hard if we’re not going to lose our country.” Apparently, voting against President Barack Obama’s plan to reduce global warming isn’t sufficient.

Insurrectionism has also reared its head on major Conservative media outlets like Fox News. Not long before the Pittsburgh shooting, Richard Poplawski posted a clip of Glenn Beck talking about “FEMA concentration camps” on the Stormfront website. Undoubtedly, other content on “The Glenn Beck Program” would have appealed to Poplawski. In February, Beck hosted an hour-long special on Fox called “We Surround Them” and a program that gamed a 2014 civil war scenario that Beck called “The Bubba Effect.” On March 3, Beck interviewed NRA celebrity spokesman Chuck Norris. During the interview, Beck stated that, “Somebody asked me this morning, they said, ‘you really believe that there's going to be trouble in the future?’ And I said, ‘if this country starts to spiral out of control and, you know, and Mexico melts down or whatever, if it really starts to spiral out of control, before America allows a country to become a totalitarian country … Americans will, they just, they won't stand for it. There will be parts of the country that will rise up.’ And they said, ‘where's that going to come from?’ And I said, ‘Texas, it's going to come from Texas.’” Six days later, Norris wrote in an editorial: “How much more will Americans take? When will enough be enough? And, when that time comes, will our leaders finally listen or will history need to record a second American Revolution?”

Beck also sponsors a website called www.the912project.com that has been overrun with insurrectionist commentators.

The Supreme Court made it clear last June that the Second Amendment guarantees an individual right to keep and bear arms for self-defense in the home. The notion that our Constitution empowers individuals to start shooting and killing local, state and federal officials when they personally believe our government has become “tyrannical,” however, is one that was rejected entirely by our Founding Fathers—as witnessed during incidents like Shay’s Rebellion and the Whiskey Rebellion. The NRA seems to think that Timothy McVeigh had a point. Only violent anti-government extremists are likely to agree...

Far from protecting liberty, insurrectionism deprives American citizens of their freedom. While grieving for officers Paul Sciullo III, Stephen J. Mayhle and Eric Kelly, who were lost in the recent Pittsburgh shooting, the local Post-Gazette said it best:

On Fairfield Street, no rights of gun ownership or free speech were vindicated. The police were just doing their thankless duty, answering a domestic disturbance call, for which they were caught in a coward's ambush and murdered. It was their rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness that were lost.

Sensible Second Thoughts

Last week, Bullet Counter Points commented on a controversial amendment to the Senate version of the D.C. voting rights bill (“A Dangerous Gambit”). Now, the legislation has been put on temporary hold as D.C. officials contemplate the price they are willing to pay for a vote in the House of Representatives.

On February 26, the Senate approved a version of the “D.C. House Voting Rights Act” with an amendment drafted by the National Rifle Association (NRA). The Ensign Amendment, sponsored by Senator John Ensign (R-NV), would repeal the District of Columbia’s new gun laws entirely and prohibit the D.C. Council from enacting any law in the future that would “unduly burden the ability of persons” to obtain and possess firearms. None of these changes to District’s gun laws were called for in the recent District of Columbia v. Heller ruling by the Supreme Court. Commenting on the Senate’s passage of the amendment, Dennis Hennigan, Legal Director for the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, said, “It was a craven political decision to put at risk…this community in order to curry favor with the gun lobby. That’s all that was.”

After the Senate vote, there was a tremendous outcry in the District over the Ensign Amendment. One D.C. resident who published a letter in the Washington Post summed up the fears of many of her fellow Washingtonians: “If this amendment becomes law, it would make me frightened to work and live in a city that has been my home for thirteen years.” Meanwhile, there was a great deal of uncertainty as to how the Democratic Leadership in the House would produce a clean version of the bill free of any gun amendments.

Concerned that there was no clear strategy to overcome the gun lobby’s anti-democratic campaign, the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence sprang into action. We alerted D.C. residents to the danger posed to public safety by the Ensign Amendment and urged them to contact D.C. Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton. On March 3, we conducted a press conference along with the D.C. Council and the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence on the steps of the District Government Building. At the event, D.C. Council Chairman Vincent Gray announced a unanimously-approved council resolution that reads: "The United States Congress must not adopt any amendment to the District of Columbia Voting Rights Act that restricts the District Government’s ability to legislate the regulation of firearms." The Chairman of the Council’s Committee on Public Safety and the Judiciary, Phil Mendelson, spoke and said, “To deny us a vote on an issue as fundamental as guns is wrong and it is reckless. It is reckless because not only would we not be able to respond to incidents of gun violence or suggestions on how to deal with gun violence, but what the Senate has done would significantly—significantly—weaken the laws regarding guns in the District.” Council Member Mary Cheh questioned whether D.C. officials should continue to support the voting rights bill if it meant the city would have to loosen its firearms regulations, saying, "To make us swallow this without objection…we're just lying down, just like always. What have we won?"

Within an hour of the press conference’s conclusion, the “D.C. House Voting Rights Act” was pulled from consideration in the House. House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-MD) explained that he did not have enough votes to bring the bill to the floor without the possibility of amendments. The rumor had spread on Capitol Hill that the NRA would be grading procedural votes on the legislation and House Democrats from conservative and rural districts took notice. Delegate Norton accused them of “reacting in a knee-jerk fashion to the NRA,” and stated that they were “doing something to kill a basic civil rights bill.”

D.C. voting rights advocates are now scrambling to lobby a group of 60+ “Blue Dog” Democrats in the House to “size up who [is] genuinely at risk” of repercussions from the NRA and to find out why these Representatives object to the District’s current gun laws. House Democratic Leaders believe they can pass a clean bill in that chamber if they secure 28 more votes in favor of blocking all amendments.

“This is hard, man,” said Delegate Norton, commenting on the lobbying effort. Coalition to Stop Gun Violence Executive Director Josh Horwitz put it a different way: "There are no easy answers here ... I don't think it's...done in the House yet, but it will take a lot of creative thinking." Even if a voting rights bill does clear the House free of gun amendments, a final version of the legislation would have to be approved in a House-Senate Conference, and there is no guarantee the Ensign Amendment would be stripped out during such negotiations.

There’s no doubt that legislation to grant voting representation to the District is long overdue. Washingtonians should not be forced to choose democracy over their own safety, however. As D.C. Council Chairman Gray recently noted, the Ensign Amendment is “extremely offensive” to the very principle upon which the “D.C. House Voting Rights Act” rests: self-determination. Hopefully, Democrats at both the federal and local level will take Gray’s assertion to heart in the crucial days ahead.

A Dangerous Gambit

District of Columbia residents have been rightfully excited this year about the prospects of finally gaining voting representation in the U.S. Congress. After the “D.C. House Voting Rights Act” passed the House in 2007 and came tantalizing close in the Senate, the stage seemed set for victory with the election of President Barack Obama, who has stated openly he will sign the legislation if it comes to his desk. Bipartisan and vote-neutral, the Act pairs a seat for the traditionally Democratic District with an additional seat for Republican-leaning Utah (the next state eligible for a seat based on U.S. Census numbers).

What should have been a day of celebration last Thursday turned into a nightmare for the District, however, when the Senate approved its version of the “D.C. House Voting Rights Act” S. 160, with an amendment drafted by the National Rifle Association (NRA).

The Ensign Amendment, sponsored by Senator John Ensign (R-NV), would gut the District of Columbia’s new gun laws entirely. D.C.’s firearm registration system would be eliminated, assault weapons and high-capacity magazines would be legalized, federal anti-trafficking laws would be rolled back so that District residents could buy guns across state lines in MD and VA (without any oversight by D.C. authorities), and the D.C. Council would be prohibited from enacting any law in the future that might “unduly burden the ability of persons” to obtain and possess firearms. None of these changes to D.C.’s gun laws were called for in the recent District of Columbia v. Heller ruling by the Supreme Court.

Speaking of the amendment, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) said, "It's reckless; it's irresponsible; it will lead to more violence." The D.C. Council was equally blunt in its assessment. "The Senate action is of huge concern," said Phil Mendelson, Chairman of the council's Public Safety and Judiciary Committee. "It strips our authority. The irony here is that on one hand they vote to give us voting representation, but on the other hand they strip any local representation in regards to our gun laws."

The amendment passed the Senate on a vote of 62-36 with the support of 22 Democrats. Asked to explain the vote count, Senator Ensign (who appears to be the NRA’s new point man in the Senate with the retirement of Idaho Senator Larry Craig) said, “People are afraid.” Norman J. Ornstein, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, concurred with this assessment, noting, "people don't want to vote against the National Rifle Association."

Democrats who voted for the Ensign Amendment noted that they were not pressured by their leadership in the Senate to vote NO (Senator Majority Leader Harry Reid himself was a YES vote). It also appears that D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty and Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton, through their deafening silence on Thursday, signaled to Democrats that they could vote as they wished on the amendment as long as voted YES on S. 160. Delegate Norton failed to even mention the passage of the Ensign Amendment in her press release after the Senate votes, referring only obliquely to “tough anti-home rule battles.” This was in direct contrast to the action of D.C. Council members, who sent a sharply-worded letter to Senators on Thursday describing the amendment as a poison pill.

It would seem that Mayor Fenty and Delegate Norton are banking on the “D.C. House Voting Rights Act” gaining approval from the House of Representatives this week without any gun amendments attached. But even though House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) has branded the Ensign Amendment "inappropriate and wrong," saying, "I hope it won't be in the final product," that outcome is far from certain. In fact, just this past September, 266 House Members voted to pass H.R. 6842, a bill that was nearly identical to the Ensign Amendment.

And even if the "D.C. House Voting Rights Act" is approved by the House without a gun amendment attached, it still has to go to a House-Senate Conference. The conference could elect to include, or not include, the Ensign Amendment. As one unnamed aide on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee noted, "There's a lot of behind-the-scenes things that could happen."

Finally, it should be stated that the “D.C. House Voting Rights Act” is certain to draw a constitutional challenge in the courts. What would happen if the bill was signed into law with the Ensign Amendment language attached only to have its congressional representation provisions struck down shortly thereafter? At that point, D.C. residents would see their democratic aspirations vanish along with their gun laws.

A single voting representative in the House is not worth the price of increased gun violence in the District. D.C. residents have a basic right to self-determination, and that is what the "D.C. House Voting Rights Act" is supposed to stand for. Should the bill, burdened with the Ensign Amendment, come up for final passage in the House, Mayor Fenty, Delegate Norton and the Democratic leadership must end their risky venture and kill the bill.

No Small Offense

The Second Amendment—as defined by the Supreme Court in the recent District of Columbia v. Heller decision—provides “an individual right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia, and to use that arm for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home.” In the same decision, the Court defined certain areas of firearm regulation that are both reasonable and constitutional. For example, the Court said that its opinion “should not be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill…”

Such “longstanding prohibitions” were defined in the 1968 Gun Control Act. The Act also prohibited “anyone who is a subject to a court order that restrains a person from harassing, stalking, or threatening an intimate partner or child of such intimate partner” from purchasing or owning a firearm(s). The U.S. Congress took further action in 1996, adopting the Lautenberg Amendment, which made it a felony for anyone convicted of a misdemeanor crime of “domestic violence” to ship, transport, possess or receive firearms or ammunition. The Amendment also made it a felony for anyone to sell or issue a firearm or ammunition to a person with such a conviction.

Unfortunately, this latter category of domestic abusers could find themselves rearmed after an upcoming Supreme Court ruling in the case of U.S. v. Hayes.

The case originated last year in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4^th Circuit. The defendant in the case, Randy Hayes of West Virginia, abused his wife and pled guilty to a misdemeanor battery charge in 1994. Ten years later, police responded to a domestic violence call from his home and learned that he had owned or sold five firearms (one was found on the premises). In light of this, he was convicted in 2005 of illegal gun possession under the terms of the Lautenberg Amendment.

Hayes challenged the conviction in the courts, alleging that since the West Virginia statute under which he was originally convicted did not have a domestic relationship between offender and victim as an element, he could not be prosecuted under the Lautenberg Amendment. A District Court upheld Hayes’ conviction, citing the United States v. Ball definition of domestic abuse as “needing only to have one element—the use or attempted use of physical force; the relationship between the perpetrator and the victim need not appear in the formal definition of the predicate offense.” The Court of Appeals, however, overturned this decision and ruled that the Lautenberg Amendment applies only to individuals convicted under state domestic violence laws (only 1/3 of the states currently have such statutes on the books). Exempt were individuals convicted of simple misdemeanor assault or battery (even for offenses that occur inside the home).

The case has now been appealed to the Supreme Court, which heard oral arguments on November 10. The Justices’ comments that day suggest that they are leaning toward upholding the Court of Appeals ruling. In one interesting exchange, Justice Antonin Scalia stated that possessing a gun was “lawful conduct” and the wife-beating charge against Hayes was “not that serious of an offense.” The government’s attorney countered that Hayes “hit his wife all around the face until it swelled out, kicked her all around her body, kicked her in the ribs…” Justice Scalia was unmoved, declaring that Hayes therefore “should have been charged with a felony, but he wasn’t.”

Justice Anthony Kennedy (a critical swing vote on the Court) found fault with the language of the Lautenberg Amendment, stating that it was “a mess.” Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg countered this notion, however, saying: “Wasn’t the statute responding to just that problem, that domestic abuse tended to be charged as misdemeanors rather than felonies? And it was that fact that the Senator [Lautenberg] was responding to when he included misdemeanor. The whole purpose of this was to make a misdemeanor battery count for the statute’s purpose ... All the circuits that had this question before the floor read it the way the Government is urging.”

There is certainly a great deal at stake in the case. According to the Family Violence Prevention Fund, “Access to firearms increases the risk of intimate partner homicide more than five times than in instances where there are no weapons, according to a [2003 study entitled “Risk Factors for Femicide in Abusive Relationships: Results from a Multi-Site Case Control Study”]. In addition, abusers who possess guns tend to inflict the most severe abuse on their partners.” The Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence has also pointed out that “about 14% of all police officer deaths occur during a response to domestic violence calls.”

It is disturbing to think that thousands of criminals such as Hayes (who failed to change his spots a full decade after his initial battery conviction) could find themselves rearmed in the near future. Indeed, a High Court ruling in favor of Hayes would force Congress to go back to the drawing table to redraft the language of the Lautenberg Amendment—an uncertain proposition even in an era of Democratic control.

Heller Revisited

Four months after the fact, the Supreme Court’s historic District of Columbia v. Heller decision continues to receive national media attention, and some recent developments have cast new light on Justice Antonin Scalia’s controversial remaking of the Second Amendment.

Recently, the New York Times highlighted criticisms of Justice Scalia’s 5-4 majority opinion by markedly conservative jurists. Two federal appeals court judges who were appointed to the bench by President Ronald Reagan, J. Harvie Wilkinson and Richard Posner, have described the opinion as judicial activism akin to the Court’s 1973 ruling in the case of Roe v. Wade.

Judge Wilkinson—who was recently considered for nomination to the Supreme Court—argues in an article entitled “Of Guns, Abortion, and the Unraveling Rule of Law” that the majority opinion in Heller “reads an ambiguous constitutional provision as creating a substantive right that the Court had never acknowledged in the more than two hundred years since the amendment’s enactment. The majority then used that same right to strike down a law passed by elected officials acting, rightly or wrongly, to preserve the safety of the citizenry.” In Wilkinson’s judgment, “it is patently wrong to have an issue that will not only affect people’s lives, but could literally cost them their lives, decided by courts that are not accountable to them.”

Wilkinson recalls that it was Justice Scalia himself who lamented the Court’s treatment of the abortion issue in the case of Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey, stating that, “by foreclosing all democratic outlet for the deep passions this issue arouses, by banishing the issue from the political forum that gives all participants, even the losers, the satisfaction of a fair hearing and an honest fight, by continuing the imposition of a rigid national rule instead of allowing for regional differences, the Court merely prolongs and intensifies the anguish.”

Judge Posner, described as “perhaps the most influential judge not on the Supreme Court,” recently wrote in the The New Republic that “the text of the [Second] amendment, whether viewed alone or in light of the concerns that actuated its adoption, creates no right to the private possession of guns for hunting or any other sport, or for the defense of person or property.” Posner argues that “the popularity of the decision and its prompt endorsement by both presidential candidates attests to the political power of the ‘gun lobby,’” and predicts that “the only certain effect of the Heller decision…will be to increase litigation over gun ownership.”

On another front, the plaintiff in the Heller case, security guard Dick Heller, recently emerged from relative obscurity to testify before the D.C. Council on the subject of the District’s gun laws. His public testimony could objectively be characterized as bizarre. Heller—the man who convinced the Supreme Court to overturn a gun control law on Second Amendment grounds for the first time in history—argued that gun owners should not have to undergo background checks or “store [firearms] securely & safely around minors.” He further stated that armed citizens in the District should be the first line of defense against the “large terrorist sleeper army” inside the United States.

Finally, the Heller ruling has even emerged in popular culture and was featured in a recent episode of the ABC series “Boston Legal.” The episode focuses on the trial of lawyer Denny Crane (played by William Shatner), who has been indicted for shooting a mugger with an illegally concealed handgun. Arguing for the defense, attorney Jerry Espenson exclaims, “I mean, no other Supreme Court in our two hundred year history could find a right to bear arms for non-military purposes. But suddenly! Presto! Thank God for the Big Five, I tell ya’! ‘A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.’ It turns out that the trick is to just ignore the first thirteen words!”

Crane later takes the stand and puts it in even simpler terms: “You don't have to be a legal genius to know that if you have a president in office who likes guns, and a vice president who likes to hunt lawyers and quail and a Supreme Court Justice who hunts with him, you're going to have a Constitutional right to shoot bad guys in the knee!”

The October 6 episode, entitled “Dances with Wolves,” can be viewed in its entirety here.

Homeland Absurdity

In June, the Supreme Court issued a 5-4 decision in the case of District of Columbia v. Heller, ruling that the District’s longstanding ban on handguns and safety & storage laws concerning firearms in the home violated the Second Amendment. D.C. lawmakers responded quickly by enacting emergency legislation to comply with the ruling. These temporary measures created a registration procedure for privately owned handguns and revised the city’s trigger-lock requirements to allow for self-defense in the home. Simultaneously, the D.C. Council announced they would enact permanent and comprehensive gun laws when they returned to work in the fall.

This good faith effort, however, was not good enough for the National Rifle Association (NRA), which saw an opportunity to turn the matter into a campaign issue. The NRA authored new legislation, H.R. 6691, which would go far beyond the stipulations of the Heller decision and eviscerate what’s left of the District’s gun laws. Their bill would repeal D.C.’s registration requirement for handguns, legalize semiautomatic assault weapons, allow individuals who have been voluntarily committed to psychiatric institutions within the last five years to own firearms, and prohibit the D.C. Council from enacting any gun-related legislation in the future. Most disturbingly, however, H.R. 6691 would allow individuals to carry loaded rifles and assault weapons in public.

During a September 8 hearing, the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform called three law enforcement officials to testify about the potential impacts of H.R. 6691 on public safety and homeland security: D.C. Police Chief Cathy Lanier, Capitol Police Chief Phillip Morse and Deputy Chief of the Park Police Kevin Hay. All three voiced serious concerns about the bill. The Secret Service and the U.S. Marshals Service were also invited to testify, but were blocked by the Bush administration from doing so.

Chief Lanier stated that she had “grave concerns” about H.R. 6691 and opined that it would make her officers’ job to protect the public, government officials and visiting dignitaries “far more difficult.” She noted that over 4,000 special events occur in D.C. annually, including high-profile events such as the 4^th of July celebration on the National Mall and the Presidential Inauguration. In her words: “Imagine how difficult it will be for law enforcement to safeguard the public, not to mention the new president at the inaugural parade, if carrying semiautomatic rifles were to suddenly become legal in Washington.” Chief Morse echoed this sentiment, saying such a situation “becomes an officer safety issue, as well as a public safety issue.”

Even with D.C.’s current gun laws, there are innumerable dangers for law enforcement to manage in the nation’s capital. Members of Congress were reminded of this just last week when an individual armed with an AK-47, a homemade grenade, and three magazines of ammunition was apprehended one block from the U.S. Capitol. His explanation to officers on the scene was that he “wanted to provide more ‘manpower’ in case of a conflict with a secret society.”

Do we really want to put law enforcement in situations where they can’t arrest individuals who are carrying loaded rifles near federal buildings? Apparently, in their zeal to appease the gun lobby during election season, Members of Congress are ready to put even their own lives at risk (in addition to the lives of D.C. residents and visitors to the nation’s capital). Sadly, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has announced that she will let H.R. 6691 come to the floor for a vote.

The NRA, feeling haughty and attempting to redefine the standard for hypocrisy, has even chastised the members of the D.C. Council for “demonstrating their arrogant disregard for the Supreme Court’s decision and the safety and liberty of their own law-abiding constituents.” Given the current lunatic provisions of H.R. 6691, however, it is clear that the D.C. Council—working through a democratic process—would do a far better job of protecting Washingtonians than Wayne LaPierre and the extremist leadership of the gun lobby.

The Light through the Loophole

It’s official—the next president of the United States will support closing the Gun Show Loophole, which allows unlicensed gun show vendors to sell firearms without conducting background checks.

Senators Barack Obama (D-IL) and Hillary Clinton (D-NY) have publicly reiterated their support for closing the loophole during the current presidential campaign. On May 16, Republican nominee for president Senator John McCain (R-AZ) removed all doubt about his own position, stating, “I believe an accurate, fair and instant background check at gun shows is a reasonable requirement.”

To his credit, this was consistent with McCain’s previous actions and statements on the issue. The senator has co-sponsored two bills to close the Gun Show Loophole in the past: one with Senator Joe Lieberman (D-CT) in 2001 and another with Senator Jack Reed (D-RI) in 2003. He also supported efforts to close the loophole at the state level in Oregon and Colorado in 2000, appearing in television ads on behalf of Americans for Gun Safety.

McCain’s advocacy drew strong criticism from the National Rifle Association (NRA). The NRA has opposed all regulation of private sales at gun shows despite the fact that background checks typically take only a few minutes to complete. In response to McCain’s legislative efforts with Senator Lieberman in 2001, the NRA described him as “one of the premier flag carriers for the enemies of the Second Amendment.”

Despite these past grievances, McCain is typically a friend of the gun lobby. He holds a C+ rating from the NRA, has supported many of their key initiatives, and was invited to address 6,000 members of the organization at their recent 2008 annual convention in Louisville, Kentucky.

During that speech, the senator demonstrated that he agrees with the NRA on a number of issues and is eager to court the votes of gun owners in the 2008 presidential election. McCain indicated he opposes renewing the federal ban on assault weapons and high capacity magazines, supports legal protection for gun dealers who channel firearms to criminals and traffickers, embraces the NRA’s interpretation of the Second Amendment in the landmark Supreme Court case District of Columbia v. Heller, and subscribes to the idea that the proliferation of guns in American society makes us safer.

But not necessarily McCain himself safer...

A few hours before Senator McCain gave his speech to the NRA, former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee took the stage. When Huckabee’s speech was interrupted by a loud noise, he said, "That was Barack Obama. He just tripped off a chair. He's getting ready to speak and somebody aimed a gun at him and he dove for the floor.

Huckabee’s audience responded with laughter, but the Secret Service officers in the building seemed to take his comment more seriously. When Senator McCain spoke that afternoon, those attending his speech were forced to pass through metal detectors and hand over any weapons they were carrying. This included not just firearms, but any potentially harmful implements. As one convention attendee stated, “It’s kind of ironic, isn’t it? We preach the right to carry [handguns] everywhere, and we got to start by turning in a pocketknife.”

Senator McCain is well acquainted with this no-firearms-on-the-premises policy from his work at the U.S. Capitol, where all visitors are prohibited from bringing firearms.

Despite his electioneering at the NRA convention, McCain should be credited for demonstrating some common sense. His reiteration of support for closing the Gun Show Loophole in front of the “Guns Anytime, Anywhere, Anyhow” crowd is a good sign—and bad news for criminals and dangerous individuals who have grown accustomed to easy access to firearms. We hope the senator will now practice what he preaches and co-sponsor the “Gun Show Background Check Act of 2008,” which has been introduced in his chamber on Capitol Hill.

Gun Lobby Lawsuit Denies Self-Determination

We were very disappointed on March 9 when the US Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit declared D.C.'s handgun ban and firearm storage laws unconstitutional in its ruling in the case of Parker v. District of Columbia. Not only did this decision counteract the democratic will of DC residents, but the majority opinion of the three-judge panel also endorsed the NRA's insurrectionist view of the Second Amendment, a dangerous precedent.

D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty and the city's attorney general are currently preparing an appeal and, for the moment, the decision of the court has been stayed. The Ed Fund will stand with DC's residents and elected officials in the coming weeks to affirm their right to determine their own public safety laws. If you are a DC resident, or wish to support DC residents in this effort, please click here to learn more about this issue and see how you can get involved.