Apparently the DC City Counsel is considering eliminating the five hour training requirement to get a handgun. Emily Miller deserves a lot of credit for this, I believe. I just went upstairs to make sure the skies weren’t filled with winged porcines.
No more ballistics tests either. Don’t for a minute think that City Council in DC is doing this out of the kindness of their hearts and their love of the Constitution. They are doing this because they know if Emily Miller goes before Congress, then Congress is going to preempt them from regulating guns at all. They are trying to deal with the threat Emily Miller poses to their ability to regulate firearms.
UPDATE: No more having to re-register either. You can kind of see what laws they want to preserve, namely their registration scheme, the restrictions on so-called assault weapons, and various other issues. It’s kind of amazing that antis have such a gut reaction to semi-automatics firearms, given that they accept the most popular pistols, and rifles are so rarely used in crime as to not be worth worrying about.
UPDATE: No more vision test.
UPDATE: The bill still has to be approved by the entire City Council, and enter a 60-day review by Congress. Law likely to go into effect this summer.
DC giving up on requiring registration renewals on top of Canada dumping its registry puts a big nail in Rahm’s Illinois registration bill attempt.
If Canada and DC have to give ground due to their respective Constitutional / Congressional action concerns, that seriously undercuts claims of “reasonableness” on Rahm’s part.
Wait, what does this do to DC’s Brady Ranking? ;)
Per the last update, can Congress amend the changes even more once they come up for review? Striking the registry entirely or mandating reciprocity, for instance?
Its getting better. Not good, but better
wow. huge improvements. still not what we would like, but easing the ownership requirements will drive the number of gun owners upward, which creates more people to agitate for change
Bravo Emily!!!
Emily Miller is in ur base stealing ur gun lawz…
I would guess that Emily Miller’s expose on the trials and tribulations of obtaining a gun in D.C. was shining a bit too much light on the barriers to gun ownership for some folks. As a result they’re scrambling to do some cya.
Thank You Emily! Now, I wonder how many NEW GunStores will be allowed to Open Up within the District?
I have to wonder, at this point, why he anti’s are so emotionally invested in “Assault weapon” bans, when it’s fairly clear they fire up our side’s grassroots like very little else. In 1994 it made sense as a trial balloon and lead-up to a full ban. That turned out to be a mistake, of course; so why continue to bitterly cling to it?
Mad Saint Jack already said what I was gonna say.
It’s nice to see that one person can still make a difference. You go girl.
Miller appears to have done what the NRA, SAF and several litigators could not. Not knocking them, but I am putting credit for her into perspective.
In other words, a whole lot of awesome, right there.
Errr, I’d substitute “faster” for “could not”; isn’t the litigation against D.C. about their obstructionist laws still in progress? That “someone who buys ink by the barrel” could speed things up is no surprise when D.C.’s overseers are in an national political environment where the RKBA has become a 3rd rail.
That also makes me wonder about the Iowa farce; I know Iowa is way behind the curve on the RKBA but do these clowns realize what damage this continues to do the Democrat brand (i.e. remind us they are the party of gun control).
In a related post, someone asked for similar things to be done in Chicago, Massachussets, and New Jersey. I still think that’s a good idea! Oh, and New York–both State and city–too.
See my above comment plus the original posting. D.C. government is something of a polite fiction, the Constitution puts the real power in the hands of the Congress. Whereas those other benighted localities have only the Federal courts to answer to (well, in theory their people, but the latter’s political power is sufficiently negated or otherwise they’re willing to live without the RKBA or much of it; of course with our having a federal system a lot of people like me just solved the problem by moving away (in my case, from Massachusetts)).
I still think it would be instructional to see just how obstructionist these states are, and it would further be beneficial to see how they compare to States that actually respect the rights of individuals.
It should be kept in mind that Emily’s success wasn’t just because of the political climate she’s in: it’s because she decided to document her attempts to purchase a gun, and to publish them for a wide audience.
While I might be willing to grant that it would be more difficult to change the law in Chicago than it would be in Washington DC, documenting such an act would do two things: it would provide information for those legislatures who attempt to change the law to be more favorable to gun rights, and it would be information for the lawyers who will continue to fight the stonewalling that politicians are still doing, in their attempts to fight these laws tooth and nail.
Indeed, it should be kept in mind that Washington DC isn’t the only city whose gun laws have been found Unconstitutional!