Brady Campaign Nervous; Admits Effort to Get DC to Modify Gun Ban Rather Than Risk Trip To SCOTUS

Paul Helmke, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, confirmed today that the group attempted to convince the District of Columbia to change its law banning guns rather than risk an appeal to the U. S. Supreme Court. They were unsuccessful.

The District, which this summer suffered a landmark defeat in a ruling by the Second District Court of Appeals that its 1976 ban on private possession of handguns violates the Second Amendment to the Constitution, chose to appeal rather than change.

"It will be the biggest ruling on the Second Amendment ever. You get nervous when you see something with far-reaching implications."

The facts are in, the good faith arguments are over. There can no longer be any rational justification for blaming the gun, for taking the position that otherwise law abiding Glocks, Sigs, Colts, Rugers and HKs are magically teleporting across the beltway in order to wreck wanton havoc on the peaceable and innocent residents of our fair capital.

Negate "the right of the people..." in the 2nd means it must also be negated in the 1st, 4th, 9th and 10th admendments. All of which contain the same subclause wording "the right of the people...".

There is but one way to read it and understand it. It can't mean one thing in four of the ten Bill of Rights and something different in another.

This topic just came up the other day, after much discussion over the years between me and a buddy of mine.

He (my buddy) plead guilty to fifth-degree assault in late 1991 for gently but firmly shoving his much smaller wife away from their front door so he could close it and exit an escalating situation in which she had been in a screaming rage and was pummeling his back as he walked away from her.

He left no mark on her and created no injury, and only pleaded guilty because he was young, had no money for a lawyer and wanted it to go away, as they were divorcing anyway.

Since then he bought a couple guns, and got a one-year duration handgun buyer’s permit from the county sheriff in about ‘96, five years after the fact. Last fall he tried to purchase a .17HMR Savage rifle to plink with at the target range. The FBI denied his purchase request due to his lifetime restriction against ownership/purchase/possession of firearms.

This was unwelcome and unsettling news to him, since he owns 4 or 5 guns and has for years now. He is also 14 years into his second marriage and there have been no incidents of violence; in fact he and his wife hardly ever disagree on anything at all. (The problem in his first marriage was her, not him.)

How can the government add a penalty after the fact on an old offense, that wasn’t a penalty at the time the offense was committed? I thought that was as unconstitutional as restricting his access to a gun in the first place. Ex post facto law or something like that?

They justify it by defining it not as part of the penalty for the offense, but as a public safety measure in which the past conviction is used to determine his suitability for firearm ownership. Like they could increase the vision requirements for a driver’s license, for instance.

The rationale for the ex post facto is sound, IMHO, if it were applied in a less “zero tolerance” fashion and if there were some way to rebut it and make exceptions (old conviction with clean record since, plea of convenience, etc.)

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