DC's reaction

From the press release:

Second, automatic and semiautomatic handguns generally remain illegal and may not be registered.

!

Kevin beat me to it. Is that a typo or something? Or is the guy just suffering from an ID-10-T error?

Perhaps Heller et. al. should ask the District Court for an injunction requiring D.C. to register semiautomatic and other handguns. The bulk of handguns made today are semiautomatic. Restricting registration to revolvers would seem to fall afoul of the Heller decision.

And then, after admitting the "safe storage" law was struck down, they irect people to kep ther firearms unloaded and disassembled.

Now I'm a fair bit familar with firearms and I'll be darned if I can figure out how you keep a revolver (the only acceptable handgun since DC classifies a semi-automatic pistol capable of accepting a magazine that can hold 12 rounds or more as a "machine gun", which means even a 7-round 1911 is a "machine gun" since there are 15+ round magazines made for them even if you don't have one) "disassembled" and still available "for use in self-defense in emergencies"?

Anyway you disassemble a revolver its going to be hard to put back together in a hurry.

These idiots are acting like SCOTUS let stand their stupid laws.

Some one needs to sue them over that machine gund definition and they need to be held in contempt for the stupidity of this statement: " In addition, although the Court struck the safe storage provision on the ground that it was too broadly written, firearms at home should be kept either unloaded and disassembled or else locked except for use in self-defense in emergencies."

Maroons.

OK, it's not just me then. I immediately noticed that "automatic and semiautomatic handguns generally remain illegal and may not be registered" also.

Wot's up wit dat? What a crock.

Yet another in a loooooooooooong list of reasons I do not live within D.C.

Please some explain to me why a ruling which allows the requirement to register handguns is a "win?" Register to enjoy a right? I thought Murdock v. Pennsylvania pretty much trashed that idea?

Is anyone else out there as terrified as I am that this was 5-4? And how badly does a Supe have to screw up to be impeached? We've got four who are BEGGING for it.

Just a few thoughts...

It looks like DC will have to fall back on tactics from 1934. A ten thousand dollar registration fee should take care of the handgun problem. If a liberal Supreme Court hears such a case they would probably find such a registration fee quite reasonable in light of the costs of gun violence. Hopefully swing voters who value their gun rights will remember that Obama is nearly as dangerous as he was before. What's unreasonable about a zoning law that forbids gun stores within a thousand miles of a school? Or why not do like Kerry wanted to do and put a tax on ammunition? Five hundred dollars per bullet or primer or grain of gunpowder shouldn't be a problem under the Second Amendment if a liberal court hears the case. And as long as we're doing like DC and defining semi-auto handguns as machine guns, lets just define single shot muzzle loading rifles as machine guns too. After all they are a kind of machine. And we can define bananas as machine guns too because they can be held in the hand kind of like a gun and they are a sort of biological machine.

Fenty thinks he's being cagy by throwing in the "semi-auto" language. This man has proven himself to be completely against our republican form of government. Any angle he can find, he will take. This is going to require litigation to resolve the breadth of the Heller ruling and whether Scalia's recognition that handguns are the preferred weapon of most Americans for personal defense includes semi-auto's. From my viewpoint, I cannot imagine they would not be, given that the majority of handguns purchased are semi's. Nevertheless, Fenty's once more proven himself to be a royal pos and is thumbing his nose at the SCOTUS. Come on NRA, let's litigate.

OK, I've calmed down and taken a more detached view of Fenty's comments. As a lawyer, I would argue that Fenty has no legal basis for his exclusion of semi-autos. (auto's, yes, under Federal law). However, there is NO legal basis, given the Heller decision, for Fenty to ban semi-auto's. This guy is just "Blowing smoke."

So who's going to hold Fenty accountable for his defiant "semi-auto" ban? I suspect the money has long run out on the Heller side and Fenty can keep playing this game for a long long time since the city is his bankrole.

opps, make that bankroll.

"Second, automatic and semiautomatic handguns generally remain illegal and may not be registered."

You guys already beat me to it.

WTF is wrong with Liberals?

An injunction forcing the registration of automatic handguns (Stechkin APS, Beretta 93R, etc.) would be unprecedented, and most likely approved through blinding ignorance of what kind of machine pistols have ever been manufactured (let alone in the NFA registry). A court decision forcing DC registration of the few fully-automatic pistols ever made would be a VERY interesting court-mandated loophole. ATF would go bonkers over this.

Not such a bad idea, actually...

The fools running the D.C. city government are just about to needlessly step upon another legal landmine. Heh.

The court just slapped down the D.C. handgun ban. Now D.C. hopes it's equally insane "machine-gun" ban will stop it's newly empowered citizens from acquiring self-loading pistols. You see the D.C. 'machine-gun' ban is so broadly written that it defines all semi-automatic firearms with the ability to accept a detachable magazine of greater than 12 rounds capacity as machine-guns!

One of my greatest fears about pushing beyond the initial D.C. v Heller case is getting relunctant courts to strike down bans against so-called "assault-weapons" and then eventually the bans against machineguns. But if D.C. hopes that playing games with those kinds of bans will allow it cling to it's dead handgun ban the court is unlikely to be persuaded. Yet the rest of the country might benefit again from the hubris of those D.C. fools as the "machine-gun" ban is overturned as well!