No, neither residents nor non-resident can carry registered or unregistered firearms for the next 89 days, until the DC government figures out whether it wishes to continue litigating or pass a new law.
Well, it would have been one House seat for DC and an additional House seat for Utah, I believe until the 2020 census and redistricting (I could be misremembering that part), and no Senate seats.
Essentially, you’re asking whether the people of DC would be more comfortable with a non-voting representative in Congress and gun laws that probably look a lot like California’s, as directed by the city council; or have a representative in Congress and have gun laws that look like Texas’, as directed by Congress.
Would you really take the latter deal? ETA: Oh yeah, you probably would.
That’s an open question. The decision is stayed, but an unconstitutional law is void ab initio. If DC’s current law is finally adjudicated unconstitutional, no one charged today under it can be punished.
Well, it would have been one House seat for DC and an additional House seat for Utah, I believe until the 2020 census and redistricting (I could be misremembering that part), and no Senate seats.
DC laws only conform with heller in teh sense taht they are not an absolute bar to owning a handgun. The hurdle is so high that I think it is not an effective bar to the exercise of a constitutional right.
That happened because they kept getting sued. The taxpayers of DC have generously contributed to the efforts of gun rights advocacy. Not only have they lost on the issues, they also got sued for the amount of attorney’s fees, and have lost on that matter as well.
If you had to do this to vote, I don’t think you’d be as blasé.
The entire debate in this thread seems to be based on the constitutionality of D.C.'s firearms restrictions, and not at all on whether the D.C. voting rights act would have been constitutional. It was absolutely correct of Norton and other House members to refuse the compromise. It would merely have muddied the waters in the courts of the basic act.
You left some things out, though. For example, DC Official Code §22-4508 requires a ten-day wait between the purchase date and the date the DC FFL holder may release the firearm to begin the application process.
The fee the FFL charges for the transfer is $125. This fee simply covers accepting a gun purchased elsewhere and delivering it to a DC resident. It’s true that – in a sense – this is a federal requirement. But the federal requirement only applies here because DC zooming laws do not permit a gun seller to open a place of business in DC. If an FFL seller existed in DC, this fee would not exist.
A court would have had to look at both aspects of the law; both the voting rights* for D.C. aspect, and the firearms aspect. Either, or both, could have been constitutional, or not.
*I’d like to note that it took me some time to figure out what the voting rights aspect was. It was to give D.C. a voting member of the House of Representatives, and to give another Representative to Utah. Do you, Bricker, believe that would be constitutional?
It’s a tough call. While Art I., Sec. 2, says that Representatives are chosen every second year by the people of the states, Sec. 5 says that the House is the sole judge of its own members qualifications. So I’d adopt an initial position that the provision is constitutional, and see what arguments might sway me.
By the way, in this particular circumstance, it wasn’t an “either or both” could be constitutional. The bill included a provision that said if any portion of the law were found unconstitutional, the whole thing had no force or effect.
A ten day waiting period seems unnecessary. What are they waiting for?
$125 is is high, I pay about $25 for gun transfers from out of state. You can probably find guns at least $50 cheaper on the internet than you would at a local gun store.
Frankly, you can get a concealed firearm permit in Virginia for about $50 and its obvious that the DC registration doesn’t come with a carry permit.
For what it’s worth, this looks easier than it was for me to get a license to purchase a long gun in NJ (also required to purchase a BB gun(!)). For a hand gun, I think the process is similar to buying a long gun, but it’s only good for 60 days or something.
