I didn’t even know the Washington Times was still around, but it used to have pretty good sports, metro and international sections when it first launched because it had a lot of staff from the old Washington Star. A few years back it totally dropped its sports and local coverage.
The daily circulation of the Washington Times is around 50,000 (cite) meaning it has half the daily readership of the Mobile Press-Register, the Knoxville News Sentinel, or the Arlington Heights Daily Herald of Illinois.
Would you be as sanguine if all your other rights were made similarly difficult to exercise at the whim of your local apparatchiks? Those on the anti-gun side of the aisle would be well served to work on ammending Constitution itself if they want to change the situation. Mendacity and setting the precedent that it is okay to place barriers on the exercise of rights does not bode well for your pet issue when your opponents take office.
Agreed. I’m only mildly for gun-rights (mostly based on the principle that you should do what the Constitution says, or change it), but you can see the exact same thing happening with access to abortion.
The union of gun-rights supporters and abortion-rights supporters is pretty large. The principle of being able to exercise ones rights without undue hassle is something we should all agree with, even if we’re still fighting over what those rights should be.
I’m a gun owner, but that is one of the reasons I am a Democrat. 
The irony of this happening in DC is just too much. In any thread about DC getting voting rights, someone eventually comes along and says that if you want representation in Congress, you should move out of the city. I guess that same logic would apply to gun ownership in DC.
Sorry to double post, but I just found this post http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=12521079&postcount=43 from Airman Doors, USAF suggesting that people from DC who want representation in Congress should leave, so I think we have found the solution to Emily’s problem, she should move.
BTW, the latest article confirms what I said above:
http://www.washingtontimes.com/blog/guns/2012/jan/27/miller-applying-register-gun-dc/
Miller attempts to take the required test before the gun is received by the dealer, only to be told that she must wait until the dealer gets the gun and gives her Form 219, because “that’s the process”. There’s no way that’s anything but a planned obstacle.
Amusing quote from the officer in charge of the gun registration office:
Okay, now the blog’s getting interesting again!
Nope. Both the right to own a firearm and DC’s lack of representation are Constitutional.
I hate it when I agree with you, but yes.
This process doesn’t appear to be any more arduous than getting a license and purchasing a car or motorcycle.
From memory:
To get a license:
- Take your school report card, go with one of your parents to City Hall to get your birth certificate. The report card proves you’re about driving age, and your parent’s knowing your date of birth will allow the city clerk to issue them a copy.
- Go to the Social Security Administration with your birth certificate and report card. This will allow them to issue you a Social Security card. Wait 3 to 5 days for it to arrive in the mail.
- Go down to the RMV. Get the driver’s manual and study it.
- Return to the RMV. Show them your birth certificate, your SSA card, fill out both sides of a one-page form, hand over fifteen bucks.
- Go over to the booths. Take the written test.
- Take your learner’s permit, and drive with some supervision for a few months.
- Spend approximately $400 on a course with 30 hours of classroom time and 12 hours of driving time. These are conducted by private companies ranging from “run by former mayor, big rented space in a building out in the suburbs” to “go to this gas station at 5:30 and we’ll pick you up for your driving lesson”.
- Bring your permit (little piece of paper, carried with you at all times, vaguely recognizable after the required six-month waiting period) to the RMV.
- Fill out both sides of another one-page form and hand over twenty bucks. You will be given a “fairgrounds ticket” with your driving test time.
- Pass a rather pathetic driving test: pull out of a parking space, drive to the end of the parking lot, signal right, go through an intersection, turn left at the next light, stop at a stop sign, turn left, three-point turn on a broad and empty street, turn right, drive past the same stoplight, turn left into the parking lot, pull up and parallel park inside a box defined by four autocross cones.
- The officer will sign the fairgrounds ticket. Take it back to the RMV.
- Wait in line at the counter again. Take a simple vision test on some machine from the Nixon administration. Some of them have the letters and color sequences written on the case.
- You will then be issued a little paper license. You can’t actually drive until you’re insured, but your plastic license will show up in a few weeks.
To buy and insure a car, sans cash to buy it outright:
- Locate a suitable car. Test-drive, inspect externally by day, inspect internally on jackstands.
- Agree on a price.
- Write up a provisional bill of sale.
- Obtain a photocopy of the title.
- Go down to the bank. Convince them that lending you ten thousand dollars so you can go and buy a ten year old Corvette is a good idea.
- The bank will require proof of employment, salary, and insurance. The first two are most easily verified by faxing them your W-2 and a pay stub on your workplace fax at lunch.
- Take the copy of the title to the car to your insurance agent. Arrange to begin insurance on the car. They cannot actually insure you on it yet, but can hand you a provisional paper.
- Return to the bank with the provisional paper. Obtain the bank check. OPTIONAL: Have the bank write out the check to the wrong name. This will set you back one night.
- Return to the seller with the provisional insurance card and the check. Sign the final bill of sale and the title.
- Go to the RMV. Exchange the title and the bill of sale for a new title.
- Stop by the bank. Have them take a photocopy of the title so that they know you bought the car with their money.
- Go back to your insurance agent. He will then give you another provisional paper.
- Take this back to the RMV. Pay the sales tax and the registration fees on the car. The RMV agent will then fill out the remaining blank spaces on the insurance agent’s provisional paper.
- Return once again to your insurance agent. OPTIONAL: Have your insurance agent notice an error on the paper and send you back to the RMV. Your insurance agent will then issue you the real insurance card.
- Head back to the RMV yet again. Turn over the insurance card and show your copy of the title. They will then issue your registration and plates.
- Have your uncle take you and the plates over. Install them using a dime after having forgotten the screwdriver.
- OPTIONAL: Discover that the targa top leaks on the way home and that GM’s automatic maintenance reminder is pleading with you to “CHANGE OIL NOW”.
From what I can tell, they aren’t denying her the right to own a firearm, they are just making sure that she knows how to use it. We don’t give people a license to drive, without making them pass an exam, it stands to reason that we should require them to know what they are doing when they purchase a gun. Besides dealing with painful and awkward bureaucracy is a DC tradition, why should buying a gun be any different than registering your car, getting a building permit, or replacing the windows on your house if you live in certain neighborhoods.
This is nonsense. You can walk down to a car dealer today and walk out no more than 2 hours later with your car, fully registered and ready to go. Getting approval on insurance takes 20 minutes, getting approval for the loan takes as long as the test drive. This is how it works when businesses and bureaucracies benefit from getting you into a car, they facilitate the process to a fault. What you said might have been true 30 years ago, but it certainly isn’t the case now.
Additionally, I can walk down to a gun shop tomorrow morning at 10 a.m. and walk out with a shiny new-in-box handgun by 10:20. The longest, most arduous part of the process is filling out the BATFE Form 4473 and the similar form for the PA State Police. It took 30 days for me to get my permit, but the process for that took 5 minutes, with 20 minutes to fill out the form.
DC’s process is arduous precisely because they don’t want people availing themselves of it.
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From what I can tell, they aren’t denying her the right to own a firearm, they are just making sure that she knows how to use it. We don’t give people a license to drive, without making them pass an exam, it stands to reason that we should require them to know what they are doing when they purchase a gun. Besides dealing with painful and awkward bureaucracy is a DC tradition, why should buying a gun be any different than registering your car, getting a building permit, or replacing the windows on your house if you live in certain neighborhoods.
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You guys keep repeating this as if repetition makes it true. They are doing it to try to prevent people from getting a firearm. What they can’t do legally they are doing bureaucratically. The ultimate proof of that is the ease with which people can obtain a firearm in virtually every other state in the union (Illinois notably excepted with their FOID nonsense). It’s even easier in New York City.
The Corvette purchase was in 2009 in Massachusetts.
It was a private party sale with bank financing.
It took me two and a half days to complete including taking a morning and an afternoon off work.
The car was completely worth it.
Sucks to be you. Last car I bought took me 90 minutes out the door. And even 2 days isn’t what Emily is going through.
THe first is certainly true in Arkansas, and I must agree with the second.
But she has the right to own a gun in DC. If she doesn’t like the way we go about getting her a permit, she should leave, just like people who don’t like not have a say in Congress should just leave rather than change the system.
Excellent. So what I propose is the following:
DC gets the right to vote for a Representative of their choice. But first they have to fill out the DC ID-10-T form to exercise that right, take a test to demonstrate their knowledge of all things related to the government, pay $250 or so to cover bureaucratic costs, and then wait 6-8 weeks to get their voting rights card. Failure to do so will cause a refusal at the polls, and loss of the card will require another 6-8 weeks to get it replaced with fees. Additionally, the office is staffed by indifferent government workers who have no interest in helping you, and some of the requirements are by appointment only.
If being bureaucratically buttfucked is something that you’re fine with, you should have no objection. We need a well-educated electorate, so surely you’re on board with that, right?
Of course, the 2nd Amendment is a Constitutional right, whereas DC representation is not. Curses, foiled again!
Uh, what?
In one case (voting rights for DC) you argue that people who don’t like the way things are set up in DC should leave. In another case (guns for Emily) you seem to thing that she is being treated unfairly and that this should be changed. I’m not sure why you keep bringing up the 2nd Amendment.
My point is that to be logically consistent, you should advise Emily to just leave DC because for some reason, the people of DC are not allowed to want to change a system that they feel is unfair when it comes to voting rights, so why should they be allowed to change the administrative process to get a gun? According to you the people of DC have only one option when faced with a problem, to leave the city.
Also, since no court has ruled that the process by which DC awards gun permits is unconstitutional, you can’t really argue that Emily’s constitutional rights are being violated.