Well, the gun ban is over. Unlike a lot of my friends, I’m not particularly enthusiastic about this. Guns are amazing tools, fun to use recreationally and capable of instilling such an awesome sense of power that I don’t think people are very good at rationally considering the questions surrounding them. Certainly that’s been my experience whenever I shoot one — for about six hours immediately thereafter gun ownership seems like a really, really great idea. Woo guns!
I think Yglesias is (sort of) right when he says:
From a policy perspective, what DC [was] trying to accomplish is just futile — as long as the District is a very small patch of land adjacent to Virginia, there’s no way gun regulations of this sort will prevent criminals from acquiring weapons.
This is true, but probably misses the utility of a handgun ban from a police perspective. The ban was an enforcement tool: find some probable cause, search a suspect and if you find a gun they’re an automatic criminal. Handy!
Of course, the MPD used to employ the “no unlicensed bikes” law toward approximately the same ends, which I thought was stupid and unjust. So maybe I’m a hypocrite. On the other hand, suspects with bikes are probably less nefarious, on average, than suspects with guns (recent comment threads notwithstanding).
At any rate, I think Matt is right to imply that this decision will have little effect on the level of gun violence in the city. And the Fenty administration says it’s ready to respond, presumably with laws about triggerlocks and a draconian concealed carry permitting process. If the upshot is that DC residents can keep ready-to-use guns in their homes but not their cars or persons, I’ll be happy enough, I suppose.
Oh! But let me reiterate Charles’ previously-stated rule: no guns in our apartment, please. This includes parties! The knife fights are quite enough already, thanks.
UPDATE: Hmm. That excerpt of the decision quoted at DCist sure makes it sound like the court is calling triggerlock requirements unconstitutional. But hey, I’m no lawyer, and I don’t recall the specifics of DC’s triggerlock law. Hopefully there’s some middle ground to be found, like requiring their use in any household with children.
UPDATE 2: Ryan==smart. I agree completely, with the previously-expressed caveat to his second point.
I suspect that the safety issue is cultural. If owning guns is legal, but a hassle, criminals will still have guns, but it may be easier or harder for them to get and keep them (depending).
By contrast, if huge numbers of people join gun clubs, and large numbers of children grow up knowing how dangerous guns are, you probably have a culture in which people are mostly able to handle the power of a gun (for better or worse in each case).
I agree in general, but have very little faith in people’s ability to effectively employ guns to defend themselves. Statistics are hard to come by, but the odds of such a situation ending badly seem very high. Guns are hard to use properly, and the average person is pretty dumb. Our collective cultural fantasies about gun use (pictured above) don’t help matters.
I think it would be great if potential criminals had to assume their victims may be armed. But I’m terrified of them actually being armed.
The logic behind the mandatory triggerlock / disassembly issue is that a law which requires a gun to be non-operational is a law that outlaws operational guns. As soon as you remove the triggerlock or assemble the gun, you’ve broken the law. De facto ban.
Err – - and I’m not Matthew Yglesias.
Interesting comments! I have linked to this post at The DC Feed.