– DC ban on carrying handguns is unconstitutional, federal judge says (RT, July 27, 2014):
In a landmark gun control case, a federal judge in Washington DC has overturned the city’s total ban on carrying handguns outside the home, saying it is unconstitutional.
“There is no longer any basis on which this Court can conclude that the District of Columbia’s total ban on the public carrying of ready-to-use handguns outside the home is constitutional under any level of scrutiny,” Judge Frederick Scullin said.
“Therefore, the Court finds that the District of Columbia’s complete ban on the carrying of handguns in public is unconstitutional,” Scullin added in his 19-page ruling.
The ruling was made in the PALMER et al v. DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA et al case.
The court order now allows both city residents and non-residents to carry handguns outside their homes.
The case has been dragging on for five years, with the lead attorney for the Second Amendment Foundation, Alan Gura, asking the federal appeals court twice to force Judge Scullin to issue a decision.
“I’m very pleased with the decision that the city can’t forbid the exercise of a fundamental constitutional right,” Gura told Fox News. He added, however, that he expects the District to appeal the decision.
The Supreme Court struck down DC’s ban on the possession of handguns in the home in the 2008 case District of Columbia v. Heller, under the basis that it violated the right to bear arms guaranteed by the US Constitution’s Second Amendment. Following the ruling, the DC Council approved regulations that permitted residents to register certain handguns.
Even in the Wild West, people were not allowed to carry handguns in town. Regardless of movies and other wonderful stories about gunslingers, and the like, they were NOT allowed to carry their guns in town or other areas with lots of people. Reason: It is too easy to get angry and pull a gun.
The US has gone crazy. The idiots in power focus on everything but what is important. The dollar is on the precipice. we are falling from world leadership to a banana republic, and it is happening now.
How stupid. Americans don’t deserve to survive, all our pioneer spirit, and my people have been here since before the American Revolution, my great-grandfather came to San Francisco around the horn in 1849………..they would be as sickened as I am by the trite, inane and mindless focus.
We are falling like a stone, and they work on crap like this….Jesus Christ himself would throw up.