Over the last six years, Washington D.C.’s nasty little government has watched in horror as the city’s draconian gun laws have been repeatedly struck down and altered by judges who have proven themselves irritatingly capable of reading the Bill of Rights and of applying it to the nation’s capital. Now, having perhaps pushed back against the tide one too many times, the city may find itself in contempt of court. In the Washington Times, Andrea Noble reports:
A federal judge is weighing a request to hold the District in contempt of court for enacting new gun laws that are so restrictive as to be out of compliance with his order to allow for firearms to be carried publicly in the city.
During a hearing Thursday, U.S. District Judge Frederick J. Scullin Jr. asked the city and the plaintiffs fighting the regulations for additional filings on whether the city should be considered in contempt of his order that officials develop a licensing scheme “consistent with constitutional standards enabling people to exercise their Second Amendment right to bear arms.”
Attorney Alan Gura, who is representing four gun owners in the 2009 Palmer v. District case, argued that, despite passing new laws that allow for concealed carry, the District has not lived up to its court-ordered obligation because the plaintiffs he is representing are still unable to obtain gun-carry permits under the city’s strict regulations.
The basic problem here is that D.C.’s new rules are so restrictive as to make it effectively impossible for the plaintiffs in the original case to be granted the permits that Scullin’s decision said they must be granted. And those plaintiffs’ lawyer has noticed:
“There is no way in the world my clients can obtain a license to carry a gun,” Mr. Gura said in court Thursday, noting that they are unable to prove they are under a specific threat as required by the regulations.
Incidentally, that “specific threat” requirement is precisely what was struck down in one of the rulings that Scullin used to inform his own: the Ninth Circuit’s Peruta decision. Will such restrictions fly in the federal city? Per Fox 5, Gura thinks that they will not:
Alan Gura, the lawyer for the Palmer plaintiffs said in court that the new carry law is a “fig leaf” and a “symbolic gesture.”
“You can apply but the law on its face does not allow people to have a permit unless they have some special need as determined by Cathy Lanier,” Gura told me after the hearing. “The Second Amendment is a right of the people. It’s not the right of a few people who the police chief selects.”
Scullin’s decision in Palmer was emphatic. One never knows, but I must say that I would be extremely surprised if he permits the city to skirt his ruling this brazely.