Monday, July 28, 2008

The law is the law even when it isn't

We pretty much forgot about the Supreme Court decision that the Washington DC law forbidding people to keep a functioning handgun in their homes. I mean,when the court rules a law is invalid, they stop enforcing the law right?

Wrong. The Washington City Council passed an "emergency" law today that keeps in place almost all of the law that was ruled unconstitutional. Apparently the decision was made that ordinary autoloading pistols where the ammunition is loaded "from the bottom" are actually machine guns. and thus cannot be owned without a special license. Of course this is no more ridiculous than the former "assault rifle" ban which defined an assault rifle by the way it looked rather than by the way it operated, but I digress. The Washington DC City Council seems to have ruled that a 6 shot revolver is vastly different than a 6 shot semi automatic pistol and that's that. When Dick Heller, the man who brought the suit against the Washington Gun Ban tried to register his gun in compliance with the law, he was told by the police, who know quite well how dishonest this is, that he could not because it was -- oh yes -- a machine gun. Whether the law in our Capitol is the law depends on what the definition of is is.

OK so we have a municipal police department who simply refuses to acknowledge the ruling as long as an illegal law is on the books and is willing to effectively write it's own gun control laws. That's close enough to an act of insurrection, but as Congress has the power and responsibility to govern the District of Columbia, and whereas Nancy Pelosi being a Californian hoplophobe refuses to allow Congress to repeal a law that has been ruled unconstitutional, Congress may be considered to be aiding and abetting a rebellion as well.

Remarkable. Perhaps we can expect some sort of rebel flag to fly over the capitol in the near future. Of course a discharge petition to bring the bill to repeal the illegal law directly to the floor has been filed, but so far it doesn't have half of the required signatures. I have a better solution. If Washington won't secede, let's expel them; let's declare them to be enemy combatants, seal the border and build a wall around these folks. They won't have enough firepower to do anything about it and we're better off without the lot of them.

4 comments:

realist said...

Do I detect from this that you are some sort of pro-gun type? Or is that sarcasm that went over my head?

(Take "pro-gun type" in the broadest, least insulting context possible)

Capt. Fogg said...

If you deal with people as "types" you can of course remove reality from the equation. Is that what you're doing? The issue isn't pro-gun, the issue is pro rule of law and that means police chiefs don't get to write it to suit their politics while spitting in the face of the high court.

It's funny however that what's looked at as a gentleman's sport in a majority of the free world is looked at as a form of antisocial insanity. Yes, I take a gun with me when my boat is in the Caribbean. Most people do. Yes, I sometimes go trap shooting or target shooting with friends at the Yacht club and yes, I support many aspects of gun control, but I also believe people have the right to defend themselves and their families. Living where home invasions are frighteningly frequent and especially against the elderly, I support the right to use deadly force in self defense and prefer it to prior law that insisted that the 87 year old grandmother jump out a window and run away or be charged with a crime.

Having twice been confronted with gangs of intruders during the 2005 hurricanes, I was pleased to have a shotgun in my possession and as concerns a well regulated militia, I'm please that some of my neighbors did too.

Call me a gun nut - go ahead.

realist said...

"Is that what you're doing? "

Of course not. At least you didn't fly off the handle as much or swear to Krishka this time, even though I said the pro-gun type term was not anything to get hung up on (i.e. reword as you see fit).

I've been on both sides of the issue, really, but for the longest time my view has been pretty close to what you describe for yourself..... and not because it is "typical conservative".

Wonder what your take is on the "castle doctrine", which I have been reading about for a while.

Capt. Fogg said...

It's Krishna. Krishka sounds like some sort of sausage.

It was the Castle doctrine I was referring to. Prior Florida law insisted that one attempt to run away if one's home was invaded. That's difficult when you have only one door and some thug is standing in it and you're in a wheelchair.

People who called it the "shoot the Avon Lady" law predicted a bloodbath, which of course has yet to appear, although quite a number of home invasions have been thwarted and at least one in which an armed neighbor prevented the execution of an entire family. I've yet to hear a retraction or apology.

They also predicted a bloodbath when Florida began to issue concealed weapon permits and haven't apologized when gun crime rates continued to decline afterwards.