April
24, 2003, 9:15 a.m.
A Woman’s Right
One woman’s
fight to bear arms.
By Robert A.
Levy
ike
many crime-ridden cities, Washington, D.C. has not been able to keep guns
away from the violent street gangs. But the city's success in disarming
responsible, law-abiding residents has been remarkable. No handgun can
be registered in D.C. Even those few pistols registered a quarter of a
century ago, prior to the district's 1976 ban, cannot be carried from
room to room without a license. All firearms in the home, including rifles
and shotguns, must be unloaded and either disassembled or bound by a trigger
lock. In effect, no one in the district can possess a functional firearm
in his own residence. Naturally, the criminal class, undeterred by laws
against murder and robbery, isn't likely to be cowed by gun regulations.
But honest, peaceable citizens will obey the regulations, and therein
lies the problem.
Shelly Parker
is one of those citizens. She resides in a high-crime neighborhood in the
heart of D.C. People living on her block are harassed relentlessly by drug
dealers and addicts. Ms. Parker decided to do something about it. She called
the police — time and again — then encouraged her neighbors to
do the same. She organized block meetings to discuss the problem. For her
audacity, Shelly Parker was labeled a troublemaker by the dealers, who threatened
her at every opportunity. This past June, the back window of her car was
broken. The following month, a large rock came through her front window.
Her security camera was stolen from the outside of her house. A drug user
drove his car into her back fence.
In February of this
year, a dealer known as "Nanook" started banging on her door
and tried to pry his way into her house, repeatedly yelling, "Bitch,
I'll kill you, I live on this block too." Nanook was eventually arrested.
He may be prosecuted. But Ms. Parker knows that the police are "not
going to do very much about the drug problem on my block." That's
why she wants to have a functional handgun in her home for self-defense
— just a garden-variety pistol, not a machine gun or assault weapon
like the gangs are able to acquire without blinking an eye.
Shelly Parker and
countless other D.C. residents should be able to defend themselves. They're
not asking to carry a weapon outdoors on the city's drug-infested streets,
where the sound of bullets regularly mocks the nation's strictest gun
ban. Their needs are more basic: a pistol where they live, so they can
defend their property, their families, and their lives.
Yet if Parker has
a handgun in her bedroom, she could face criminal penalties — arrest,
prosecution, fine, even incarceration — because of the District's
preposterous gun laws. Upstanding citizens who reside in D.C., pay taxes
in D.C., and obey D.C. laws are too often the victims of criminal predators.
Still, the city insists that if someone breaks into their houses, their
only choice is to call 911 and pray that help gets there in time. Anyone
who's ever used the city's emergency phone service knows that a pizza
can be delivered before the police show up.
Shelly Parker's fight
for the right of self-defense is now being litigated in a Washington,
D.C. federal court. On behalf of Ms. Parker and five other at-risk residents,
three attorneys and I filed a civil lawsuit, Parker v. District
of Columbia, challenging the D.C. gun ban on Second Amendment grounds.
The plaintiffs do not contend that Second Amendment rights are absolute.
Surely, guns can be denied to unfit persons like felons, minors, and the
mentally incompetent. And, of course, it's reasonable to keep massively
destructive weapons, with little practical use for self-defense, out of
private hands. But otherwise, according to the U.S. Court of Appeals for
the Fifth Circuit, the Constitution "protects the right of individuals
... to privately possess and bear their own firearms."
That's also the position
of U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft and an impressive array of legal
scholars, including Harvard's liberal icon, Laurence Tribe, and Yale's
highly respected Akhil Amar. They agree on two fundamental propositions:
The Second Amendment confers an individual right to bear arms; but that
right is subject to reasonable regulation. To the extent there's disagreement,
it hinges on what constitutes reasonable regulation; that is, where to
draw the line. On that score, there can be no question that D.C.'s blanket
prohibitions are patently unreasonable. That's why Shelly Parker is finally
going to win her fight for the right to self-defense.
—
Robert A. Levy is senior fellow in constitutional studies at the Cato
Institute.
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ike
many crime-ridden cities, Washington, D.C. has not been able to keep guns
away from the violent street gangs. But the city's success in disarming
responsible, law-abiding residents has been remarkable. No handgun can
be registered in D.C. Even those few pistols registered a quarter of a
century ago, prior to the district's 1976 ban, cannot be carried from
room to room without a license. All firearms in the home, including rifles
and shotguns, must be unloaded and either disassembled or bound by a trigger
lock. In effect, no one in the district can possess a functional firearm
in his own residence. Naturally, the criminal class, undeterred by laws
against murder and robbery, isn't likely to be cowed by gun regulations.
But honest, peaceable citizens will obey the regulations, and therein
lies the problem.
