... continued from above.
Lets check things out just a bit more from the words of the mayor that I had clipped above, and am clipping again here:
| "Today's decision flies in the face of laws that have helped decrease gun violence in the District of Columbia," he said. "The ruling also turns aside longstanding precedents and marks the first time in the history of the United States that a federal appeals court has struck down a gun law on Second Amendment grounds." |
There's a lot of problems in those statements. Documented in the same news article here:
But gun violence has continued to plague the city.
In 2005, firearms were used to commit 157 of the District's 196 homicides, or about 80 percent. That percentage has remained relatively consistent since 2001, when a five-year low of 78.4 percent of homicides were committed using guns.
FBI crime statistics for 2005 show 10,100 of the country's 14,860 homicide victims, or 68 percent, were killed by guns.
So far this year, violent crimes involving guns in the District are on the rise, while all other violent crimes are decreasing, according to police statistics. |
These problems have continued despite one of the toughest gun laws in the nations. Again, documented in the original article here:
| The District has some of the nation's strictest gun laws, prohibiting ownership of most guns that were not registered before 1977. Privately owned rifles and shotguns must be kept at home and stored unloaded, disassembled or bound by a trigger lock or a similar device. |
Personally, I have no issue with putting some restrictions on gun ownership. Requiring training in gun safety is a good thing. Requiring guns to be stored unloaded, disassembled or bound by a trigger lock is a good thing.
Blatantly forbidding gun ownership for a normal (non-criminal) citizen is a bad thing. If you've never been convicted of a violent crime, or other major felony, then you should not be prohibited from owning a gun for your own protection, because you are a collector, or for any other reason you may choose.
As this appeals court found, the right to bear arms is guaranteed in the 2nd Ammendment to the U.S. constitution, and finally we're seeing courts that are smart enough to say that is the case.
