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D.C. handgun-ban backers oblivious to reality

By Tom Knott
February 21, 2008

Since 1976, the criminals of the city have carried handguns and killed with impunity, while the law-abiding have cowered in their midst.

This is not what the D.C. Council imagined 32 years ago when it enacted what is regarded as the strictest gun-control measure in the nation. The law did not work out as envisioned, because criminals, serial killers and nut jobs who go postal do not follow the law. This elementary observation inevitably escapes the thought process of the well-meaning.

Instead, the well-meaning point to the easy availability of handguns in Maryland and Virginia being the bane on the ban in the city, which is fair enough. So let's imagine a national ban on handguns, just as there is a national ban on cocaine and heroin and other assorted substances. You know how this hypothetical ban would go down. A vast, unregulated black market suddenly would move into place to answer the demand, and the flow of handguns would remain as it ever was.

This is the reality that befuddles those politicians who endeavor to control more and more aspects of life, ostensibly to save lives. But humans, being the unruly animals that we are, find creative ways to skirt their puppeteers.

The matter of handguns in the city is before the Supreme Court now because of a security guard, Dick Anthony Heller, who thought it was the height of hypocrisy that he could carry a handgun to defend a federal building but could not keep one in his home to defend himself.

The Second Amendment case, the District of Columbia v. Heller, No. 07-290, is the first to go before the Supreme Court since 1939. Oral arguments are expected to begin next month; a ruling could come down in the summer.

I do not pretend to know how the nine justices will rule. I just know that out on the streets, far removed from the insulated federal buildings downtown and the fantasies often peddled by professors from their ivory towers, the issue of self-defense is considerably more gray.

Even in the so-called nicer parts of the city, there are streets that you dare not walk at night if you want to stay in possession of your health, money, credit cards and high-tech gadgetry.

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