At a very busy intersection in downtown Washington on Friday afternoon, as the streets and sidewalks overflowed with commuters wrapping up another week of work in the nation’s capital and excited by the promise of a sunny weekend, a dark-haired young man beamed as held a home-made sign aloft.
“A Great Day for D.C.,” read the sign on one side. “The Most Important Right,” it read on the flip side.
Not everyone had heard the news.
“What’s that about?” asked a man in the crowd waiting to cross the street.
“The gun thing,” someone answered.
“What gun thing?” another person asked.
“Court overturned the no-gun law in D.C.,” the voice came back.
Just then, a couple of horns tooted, as if in approval, as cars passed the man with the sign.
“Boooooo; shame on you!” a woman’s voice shouted from a passing car.
And so went another skirmish in the never-ending battle over the country’s gun laws. In this one, a federal appeals court ruled that the Second Amendment guarantee -- the right to bear arms -- does not just apply to state militias, but to individuals. For 30 years, the D.C. city ordinance has outlawed individual ownership.
AP Video
Because the U.S. has been see-sawing over this gun thing forever and can’t seem to get it settled, what happens next is wholly predictable.
The city will fight the appellate court’s decision. Indeed, the wonderful, brilliant, progressive new mayor, Adrien Fenty, says he’s willing to go to the Supreme Court if the Circuit Court won’t reconsider its decision.
The National Rifle Association and the rest of the huge, powerful gun lobby will spin it as a win for the good, law-abiding citizens of Washington, who deserve the right to protect hearth and home.
Gun control groups and anti-gun advocates like yours truly will wring our hands over yet another defeat in the continuing battle to get over the gun madness that has this country in such a grip. It will not matter that D.C. always makes the Top 10 in most murderous city studies, or that guns don’t kill people, people kill people, and people with guns really kill people.
The city’s bad guys -- and gals -- will continue to cop their guns from underground dealers or just take a quick subway ride over the river to northern Virginia, where they practically give guns away. Even a 12-year-old can get a rifle or a shotgun over there.
Columnists who decry the court’s decision will hear from gun nuts like the purported woman lawyer from Nevada, who once got into an email fight with me over an anti-gun column I had written, refused to consider me anything but a traitor and a fool, and then posted it on an NRA chatroom site when I told her to “f--- herself,” which I only regret not having done from the start.
And the next time someone settles a score or takes what isn’t theirs or at the point of a gun, the gun lovers will say, “See, this is why people need protection.”
And the next time a little kid finds his daddy’s handgun in the closet and fiddles with the trigger and kills himself or a playmate, the opponents will say, “See, this is what happens when guns are like kudzu.”
And the next time someone’s child is grave-bound because someone had a gun, it won’t make a damn bit of difference whether he or she got it legally.
