District Judge Richard Leon struck down a part of Washington DC’s gun carry law as unconstitutional on Tuesday.
In a 46-page ruling, in which he ordered a preliminary injunction, Leon put a halt on how DC police have only approved permits for people to carry their guns concealed who had a “good reason to fear injury” or those who are employed in jobs that are considered to be high risk.
Leon wrote that law-abiding responsible citizens should be able “to carry arms in public for the purpose of self-defense” and that right “does indeed lie at the core of the Second Amendment.”
“The enshrinement of constitutional rights necessarily takes certain policy choices off the table,” Leon wrote, quoting the 5-to-4 Heller Supreme Court decision from 2008 which established a constitutional right to keep firearms inside one’s home.
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“Because the right to bear arms includes the right to carry firearms for self-defense both in and outside the home, I find that the District’s ‘good reason’ requirement likely places an unconstitutional burden on this right,” he wrote.
Judge Leon then called the violations of the constitutionally protected rights of citizens that was imposed by DC in 2014 “understandable, but overly zealous.”
“The District’s understandable, but overzealous, desire to restrict the right to carry in public a firearm for self-defense to the smallest possible number of law-abiding, responsible citizens is exactly the type of policy choice the Justices had in mind,” he wrote.
Frankly, I don’t know what is understandable about issuing permission (permits) in order for one to exercise a God-given right to keep and bear arms. It seems clear to me that if rights do come from God, as our founding fathers expressed in the Declaration of Independence, that no government has a right to infringe on those rights, and among those rights is the right to keep and bear arms.
Interestingly enough, a pro-gun, pro-sodomite group known as Pink Pistols joined with Matthew Grace in suing DC.
“This is not a want,” Gwendolyn S. Patton, head of Pink Pistols International, said. “This is a need. This is a right that we have and we are going to exercise it. We wish to exercise it legally and therefore we’re going to challenge this idea that you have a right to tell us what is a sufficient cause for us to carry a gun.”
While I agree with Patton that this is not an issue of want, but of rights, she went on to say that sodomites face “an awful lot of instances where we get targeted by people who don’t like us, don’t like what we do, don’t like what we stand for, don’t like our politics.”
Not to get sidetracked, but Patton added, “They don’t think we have the right to go about our lives in a normal fashion and decide to harm us, to attack us, to hurt us, and, in many cases, to kill us. This is unacceptable to us so we advocate the use of the Second Amendment to protect ourselves from such things.”
Personally, we know of many faked crimes against professed sodomites they actually engaged in themselves. The problem with the argumentation is that these people’s alleged lifestyle is unlawful. Not only does God condemn it as an abominable crime, but so did our founding fathers. To mix rights with criminal activity is wrong; and while Patton is right about the ability to defend one’s self, she is not correct when it comes to engaging the behavior of sodomy, which she promotes.
DC is a “may issue” city, but of course, that sort of thinking is diametrically opposed to the Constitution’s protections in the Second Amendment.
“The District of Columbia cannot parcel out constitutional rights to a select few of its choosing,” plaintiffs’ attorney David Thompson said Tuesday. “That’s not how the Constitution works in this country.”
As for Mayor Muriel E. Bowser, her spokesperson, Christina Harper said, “We believe our gun laws are constitutional and should be upheld.”
How any gun law is constitutional is beyond me.
The Washington Free Beacon reports that the city will request a stay on the ruling in addition to filing an appeal, according to D.C. Attorney General Karl Racine.
“We continue to believe our ‘good reason’ requirement for a concealed-carry permit is both constitutional and in line with similar laws in New Jersey, New York and Maryland – all of which have been upheld by federal appeals courts,” he said in a statement. “Just two months ago, another judge on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia declined to enjoin the District from enforcing the same requirement at issue in today’s ruling. We believe that the District’s gun laws are reasonable and necessary to ensure public safety in a dense urban area, and we will request a stay of this decision while we appeal.”
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