And does the law require the use of golf clubs to exercise a constitutionally protected right?
I think she was obviously putting things in a bad light where she could but I would ask what other constitutional right requires so much effort to exercise? It takes me literally 15 minutes to buy a gun in Virginia if I already know what I want to get and yet Virginia (or any city within Virginia) seems just as safe as DC.
Yes, all these are true. But the difference is that no law prohibits the sale of golf clubs in DC. Presumably, that lack exists because of market conditions, not an affirmative prohibition by legislation.
It seems to me that the quoted paragraph from Ms. Miller laid out her concern fairly clearly:
You’re right that as a general rule, you are free to eschew doing business with someone working out of their home. But in this case, the city is requiring she do the training in order to permit her to exercise her right to possess a firearm in her home. So it’s not merely a choice – her objection is that the city simultaneously requires the class and the class is offered in potentially unsafe conditions.
I appreciate your effort to refocus the discussion on another complaint, but perhaps we could finish this one.
What, specifically, should she have done differently?
Your examples are not on point since none implicate enumerated fundamental constitutional rights.
The problem is that DC required a certain thing as a pre-requisite to obtaining a firearm, then prohibited that thing within its jurisdiction. While this is a different jurisdiction, this specific tactic was addressed in Ezell v. Chicago. Chicago required live fire training before allowing firearm purchase, then proceeded to ban all live fire ranges within the city. Chicago was sued and prevailed at the district level, but was ultimately reversed at the federal appellate level. From that opinion:
If litigated, I would expect a similar outcome in DC. This was also a Gura and SAF case. I am sure they are grateful for the attorney fees.
In 2011, when DC’s only gun dealer lost his lease due to rising rents, the city offered him a lease in the police headquarters. They charged him $100 a month. He was reportedly handling about 6-10 gun sales per month.
Just how many gun dealers do you expect the market to support in a city with 5-10 gun sales per month? It’s a city of 600,000, mostly liberals who support strict gun laws.
My point in raising the fact that DC residents do lots of things in the suburbs isn’t a commentary on the fact that it is a routine part of life here to go to Virginia or Maryland to shop, regardless of the constitutional protections of what you’re shopping for. And I have to ask: if you are standing in Union Station, just four blocks from the Capitol, it will take you 14 minutes on a Red Line train, and then an 8 minute walk, to get to a gun dealer in Silver Spring that’s about a half mile outside of DC limits. The trip will cost you $2.70.
Did Ms Miller not have google when she wrote that article talking about how difficult it is to reach a gun shop? Maybe I’ll give her the benefit of the doubt and say that she simply didn’t know that a gun store has been in business for 60 years just steps from a public transportation hub.
If DC had decided to persist in running all gun dealers out of DC, and put gun ownership in a catch 22 due to Federal laws requiring interstate transfers through an FFL, I agree that would be unfair. But it just seems like there isn’t a very big market for legal gun purchases here to begin with, and the government is now actually subsidizing the one guy who wants to do business in the city. What more do you expect DC to do?
Out of a list of 47 instructors, how many do you reckon were “potentially unsafe?” How many of those instructors do you believe must meet Ms Miller’s subjective standard of safety in order to meet your own concept of fairness (if not constitutionality)?
You miss the point. Just how much assistance is the government obligated to give someone to assist them in engaging in commerce? Clearly you think that it is insufficient for the government to require gun classes and the rely on someone’s initiative to use Google or the yellow pages. It seems you think it is insufficient to provide a list of 47 instructors if phone calls to some of them roll over to voicemail or, god forbid, someone is scared that an American is running a business out of their home. (And how rational do you believe it is for a bad guy to open a firearm training business, go through a criminal background check, advertise their business with the police department, only to assault or rob their customers referred to them by the police department? Pardon me, but don’t you have to be pretty damn stupid to think this is a rational fear?)
I struggle to find the precise course of action that fully details the principle that she should have acted like a grownup who can solve rudimentary life challenges in which a nanny state government is not expected to literally hold your hand through rather simple bureaucratic processes. Being able to read and understand directions written in pamphlets is also helpful. Not treating people with contempt - such as when she expected Sykes to make time for her when it is perfectly clear that he works by appointment only - is also helpful. Not being a journalist for a crappy newspaper with low journalistic standards, with a political agenda and financial incentive to make the process seem extraordinarily onerous no matter how minor an issue may be, would also be a positive development.
I have no way of knowing – I suspect, given the number of gun folks who do things as a hobby/second job, more than half.
“Engaging in commerce” in general? Not much, if any.
“Engaging in commerce” which the government mandates, and which it has crippled through onerous legislation – i.e., forbidding the lessons in DC territory?
A lot. Specifically, since they mandated at the time a particular instructor certification, they should maintain up-to-date lists of those possessing that certification.
Not always. In Virginia, it’s perfectly fine – because Virginia does not make it illegal to teach the very gun glasses it requires.
Because you are a liberal, I suspect you would not offer a similar opinion about a woman worried about being required to visit the home of a man unknown to her in virtually any other circumstances.
No, her ire stems from the fact these are not “simple” bureaucratic processes. These were processes that were designed without any interest in efficiency. Once again, though, I will highlight your effort to turn the conversation away from her complaint about this issue and on to safer ground like her employer.
It’s true that she has an agenda. But it’s also true that DC had the most restrictive gun laws in the entire nation. So her effort to paint DC’s gun laws as extra-restrictive doesn’t need any exaggeration: they WERE extra-restrictive.
I’m inclined to agree - this rather cursory (if not useless) list the government provides to obtain services they have decided to make mandatory for the obvious sake of creating difficulty for citizens is a sign of intrusive if not abusive regulation, more so than serving any likely public-safety purpose.
Of course, I’m curious what would happen if the laws in DC were reduced to the level of, say, Virginia - would gun dealers and instructors set up shop in D.C.? Is the demand for legal handguns sufficiently high in the District for anyone to set up shop in the face of risking being re-regulated out of business?
So in 2011, he handles 5-10 gun sales/month and in the time since Heller there have been over 3000 handgun registrations… How does that happen?
A $125 transfer fee is much higher than what you would have with competition. Let me open a gun store across the street from a police station somewhere in northwest and I could get investors for that store by the time school starts (you know for the back to school sales 
).
I think so. There are 600,000 people in DC. About half the city lives in NW, there is money there. Federal FFLs don’t need brick and mortar licenses and frequently just take orders and then shop around for the best deal they can from the various wholesalers.
I’ve never seen that statistic before. How many of those 3,000 registrations were new purchases? For example, Mr. Heller registered two pistols he owned but kept in Maryland. I know a couple other DCians who have done the same. If you know how many of those 3,000 are new purchases, I’d be interested to learn that.
As I just posted in the other thread, it looks like the zoning regulations allow you to open a gun shop on Indiana Avenue, right next to the DC government buildings and courthouses and across the street from the existing FFL dealer. I wish you the best on your business endeavors!
Are you contending that decades of prohibition didn’t have an impact on both the supply and demand for firearms? Regardless of the current level in DC it is not a stretch to say that the laws previously struck down and those that have been recently changed impacted supply and demand.
“You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say, ‘you are free to compete with all the others,’ and still justly believe that you have been completely fair.”
You’re free to provide evidence that generations worth of oppression has crippled the free market of guns. Knock yourself out.
3000 gun registrations as noted above with zero before 2008. That’s ample evidence.
DC had no free market for gun purchases. They had a complete prohibition on handgun purchases.
You’re aware that a registration is not the same thing as a sale, right?
You’re saying that years of prohibition has altered supply and demand. 3,000 registrations is not evidence that there would have been 3,000 guns sold in DC had there been a gun shop open the last few years. I wouldn’t be surprised at all if a lot of those guns were simply transferred from storage outside of DC, without being new purchases.
Does it suggest to you that SOME guns would have been sold? It seems pretty …er…myopic to suggest that 3,000 registrations means nothing at all.
So it’s okay with you if they set up DC’s polling places at the 47 locations outside of the District, some of which are in the basement of private individuals’ residences?
I got a funny feeling that the rules for what counts as “onerous” will change when the constitutional right changes.
Forget voting: what if we told someone they can’t write for publication without a writer’s license, subject to these same restrictions? I am certain Ravenman’s sang-froid would evaporate.
Why don’t I ask you an equally stupid question: does the Second Amendment require that every American have gun stores as close to their house as close as their local polling place? I would hazard to guess that most polling places are within, say, a 10 minute walk of a person’s house. Does that mean that everyone must have a gun store (or firearms training center) also within a 10 minute walk of their house? Why not?
You get upset if I raise “extraneous” issues, and now you start talking about writer’s licenses? Physician, health thyself!
Let’s just look at what the courts have had to say about whether DC’s current gun laws are too onerous and unconstitutional: This judge says they aren’t.
Literally the only thing I can find on the topic is that Mr. Sykes handles about 10 or so registrations a month. My assumption is that these registrations do actually correspond with gun sales, because other people – including Mr. Heller – who owned handguns stored elsewhere did not have to sell them to themselves through Mr. Sykes in order to register them. They just had to bring the gun to the police department.
So let’s say that Sykes is involved in 18 handgun sales each month. No, let’s say 25 - let’s really give you the benefit of the doubt. That means that since the new laws went into effect, he probably has been involved in fewer than half of the registrations that have been claimed (25 times 12 months times 5(ish) years equals 1,500 registrations out of 3,000 claimed).
If we are more conservative and take that 10 per month more at face value, he may have processed as few as 600 gun sales over the last several years.
Either way, I think my point holds: it doesn’t seem like there is a very large market for legal handguns in DC.
That’s fair – although in my defense I was responding to another poster’s comment, rather than raising the issue myself. But your point is well-taken; the issue is not voting. Or “speech licenses.”
True.
Of course, the US District Court for the District of Columbia also found that Dick Heller had no right to possess a handgun in his home, a view that was rebuked by the US Supreme Court.
Since the US District Court sets no precedent in its rulings, I’d say that a more final ruling would be more persuasive. And, indeed, I expect that Mr. Heller will be involved in seeing that come about.