D.C. gun ban heads to the high court

From The Washington Post:

The District asked the Supreme Court yesterday to save the city's ban on handgun ownership, saying an appeals court's decision overturning the prohibition "drastically departs from the mainstream of American jurisprudence."

If the court agrees to take the case, as most legal experts believe is likely, it could lead to a historic decision sometime next year on whether the Second Amendment to the Constitution protects an individual's right to own a gun or simply imparts a collective, civic right related to maintaining state militias.

It is a question that has been hotly debated in the nation's courts and legislatures for years, and a decision by the Supreme Court to settle the issue could carry broad implications for local governments and thrust gun control as an issue into the 2008 elections.

The District argues in its petition that its law -- one of the strictest in the nation -- should be upheld regardless of whether the court sides with the individualist or collective legal theory.

"It is eminently reasonable to permit private ownership of other types of weapons, including shotguns and rifles, but ban the easily concealed and uniquely dangerous modern handgun," states the petition, filed by D.C. Attorney General Linda Singer. It adds: "Whatever right the Second Amendment guarantees, it does not require the District to stand by while its citizens die."

It is interesting that the D.C. lawyers are hedging their bets on the issue of whether the Second Amendment guarantees (even to the point of using the correct term, "guarantees" rather than "grants") an individual right or a collective right. I think they realize that the "collective right" argument has been so thoroughly discredited that even some of the liberal Supreme Court Justices might be unwilling to look like idiots by buying into it.

I wonder if the government of the District and the residents of the District really want to go before the Supreme Court with this set of arguments:

Most petitions for review focus on why the court should take the case, but the District's filing serves as more of a preview of its defense of the law, filled with statistics about gun violence and the harm caused to children, women and police officers.

"No other provision of the Bill of Rights even arguably requires a government to tolerate serious physical harm on anything like the scale of the devastation worked by handguns," the petition states.

Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D) said at a news conference outside D.C. police headquarters that the law has strong support among District residents. "The only possible outcome of more handguns in the home is more violence," he said. "Our appeal will help the District of Columbia be able to continue to reduce gun violence."

I remember being in a small gun store in a small town here in North Carolina one day when a black man came in to buy a handgun. The gentleman was well dressed and spoke like an educated man and the firearms he was interested in were not cheap. The man behind the counter kept coming up with reasons why the fellow shouldn't buy this gun or that gun until the man finally left. The gunstore clerk then turned to me and said, "Niggers just shouldn't have guns".

Stripped down to its essence that seems to be the whole of Mayor Fenty's case against overturning the D.C. handgun ban.

Is this really the image of himself, his city and his race that Mr. Fenty wants to project to the world? Does Mayor Fenty really believe that his people are too savage and animalistic to be trusted with weapons? If this is the case (and I don't believe it for a second) then the Confederacy was right and Negros are better off being owned by benevolent white masters who will control their base urges and put them to productive work while exposing them to the Gospel (in case they really do have human souls).

So what will it me Mr. Mayor, you want to reconsider your position or you want to report to the nearest cotton patch and start picking?