Washington DC Rejects Heller’s Gun Registration Application
Yes, that Heller.
WASHINGTON — District residents can start registering their guns today. But at least one very high profile application was already rejected.
Dick Heller is the man who brought the lawsuit against the District’s 32-year-old ban on handguns. He was among the first in line Thursday morning to apply for a handgun permit.
But when he tried to register his semi-automatic weapon, he says he was rejected. He says his gun has seven bullet clip. Heller says the City Council legislation allows weapons with fewer than eleven bullets in the clip. A spokesman for the DC Police says the gun was a bottom-loading weapon, and according to their interpretation, all bottom-loading guns are outlawed because they are grouped with machine guns.
Besides obtaining paperwork to buy new handguns, residents also can register firearms they’ve had illegally under a 180-day amnesty period.
Though residents will be allowed to begin applying for handgun permits, city officials have said the entire process could take weeks or months.
What I don’t understand is the “amnesty period.” If there is a constitutional right to keep and bear arms why would it matter if citizens possessed guns that were only illegal under an unconstitutional law?
Regardless, there is clearly more work to do on the gun rights front. The gun control powers that be may be forced to acknowledge that keeping and bearing a gun is a constitutional right, but it appears as though they’re going to try and effect a defacto gun ban anyway by clogging the gun registration process with so much bureaucracy that most people won’t want to hassle with it anyway.
I say another lawsuit is in order. This one questioning Washington DC’s ability to define some guns as ok and others as not ok and also one questioning a process that puts undue burden on citizens who are simply trying to exercise one of their inalienable rights.
