Has DC's Handgun Ban Prevented Bloodshed?

The Supreme Court Will Examine Ban's Constitutionality, Others Question Its Effectiveness

(AP)  On Sept. 24, 1976, one of the toughest gun laws in the nation took effect in the District of Columbia, essentially outlawing the private ownership of new handguns in a city struggling with violence.

Over the next few weeks, a man with a .32-caliber pistol held up workers at a downtown federal office at midday, a cab driver was shot in the head, and a senator was mugged by three youths, one carrying a revolver, near the U.S. Capitol.

Since the ban was passed, more than 8,400 people have been murdered in the district, many killed by handguns. Nearly 80 percent of the 181 murders in 2007 were committed with guns.

On Tuesday, the Supreme Court is scheduled to hear arguments in a challenge to the city's handgun ban. The case is likely to produce the most important firearms ruling in generations and could undermine other gun control laws nationwide if the court takes an expansive view of the right to bear arms.

The central question is whether the Second Amendment guarantees the right of individuals to bear arms, or instead protects the collective right of states to maintain militias. The court probably won't base its ruling on the effectiveness of Washington's law.

Outside the court, however, a long-debated question is whether a strict gun law like Washington's has any effect on violent crime.

City leaders say the law has kept many guns off the street and warn that violence could increase without it. Firearms still flow in from states like Maryland and Virginia, but District of Columbia officials say the ban reduces the number of legally owned firearms that are stolen or used in domestic killings and suicides.

"Whatever right the Second Amendment guarantees, it does not require the district to stand by while its citizens die," the city wrote in its petition to the Supreme Court last year.

To gun rights advocates, the numbers prove a different point: Violence continues unchecked despite the ban. And while criminals seem to be able to get guns with ease, law-abiding people are being denied the means to protect themselves, they say.

"I should be able to live in the district and protect myself," said Shelly Parker, who said she was harassed and threatened in her former Capitol Hill home by a drug dealer who once tried to break down her door. Parker was a plaintiff in the original case against the city.

Those who live daily with gun violence on Washington's streets, many of them just teens, paint a stark picture of how easy it is to get a firearm. A gun can be bought with a few well-placed calls and a couple hundred dollars.

"Some people look at a gun as part of their outfit," said Maurice Benton, a 19-year-old who says he has never had a gun but was shot in the abdomen by members of a gang while leaving a party in 2006. "They can't go anywhere without it."

The city's gun ban emerged from exasperation. Still reeling from the riots of 1968, the city saw violent crime rise and residents flee to the suburbs. In 1974, two years before the ban took effect, more than half of all homicides were committed with handguns.

There were an estimated 22,000 registered gun owners in the city in 1976, but a Georgetown University poll found three out of four city residents supported the bill. The law cleared the D.C. Council in a 12-1 vote and went on to survive both a court challenge by the National Rifle Association and efforts in Congress to scuttle it.

"Handgun crimes were just getting out of sight," said Sterling Tucker, D.C. Council chairman when the ban was enacted. "We had to isolate and contain the problem. We thought a handgun law would do that."

The law bars private ownership of handguns, with exceptions for law enforcement officers and those who had registered handguns before the ban took effect. Shotguns and rifles are legal, but must be disassembled or stored with trigger locks.

Homicides in the district did ebb over the next few years, largely following a national trend. In 1977, the U.S. Conference of Mayors reported robberies, assaults and homicides using handguns had fallen sharply in D.C. and concluded the ban was working. However, the results were challenged even by the city's police department, which said police tactics had contributed to the drop.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, murders spiked as Washington, like many other cities, was hit by the crack epidemic. By 1991, the number of homicides reached 479, or 81 deaths per 100,000 people, earning the city status as the nation's murder capital.

Yet that year, a study released by University of Maryland criminologists in the New England Journal of Medicine suggested the gun ban had saved lives in the decade before. They argued the ban had prevented 47 deaths per year in D.C., both suicides and murders. Surrounding areas in Maryland and Virginia had not seen a corresponding drop in gun crime.

The study analyzed data only through 1987, and did not incorporate the higher murder rate during the crack surge, an epidemic critics said revealed the law's weakness. Other criminologists said the study should have compared the district to Baltimore, a city with similar crime problems where violence also declined during the same period. The authors went back and compared the district to other cities, including Baltimore, saying their conclusions still held up.

In the late 1990s, the annual homicide numbers began to fall as the crack scourge ebbed. In the past decade, many of the city's neighborhoods also have undergone a revitalization, attracting more affluent residents. Last year, there were 181 murders.

But the city's location remains a problem for the law. Washington is surrounded by Virginia and Maryland, where guns remain legal, and many firearms can be traced to shops just across the line. The number of guns seized by police has surged in recent years, reaching 2,924 in 2007, nearly 1,000 more than in 2003. Most of the guns were used in crimes.

Sterling Tucker said city officials realized the law had its limits, that guns would never vanish from the streets. And they never imagined it would do away with homicides and violent crime altogether. He believes it has at least provided some check on violence, taken away a tool for some criminals.

"We knew there were problems we couldn't wipe out," he said. "But we had a little more control over it."

[bretster7]

trueprogress said,
As a college professor, I have an overview which may bring some insight into this discussion and perhaps some wisdom. When me and my studnets talk about guns

When Me and my students? It should be "my students and I" Terrible grammar from a "college professor" don''t you think? At which college do you profess? I wan''t to make sure I do not send my children there. Do you really think that by saying are a professor it adds validity to you weak bleeding heat arguement?

[guidosfoot]

t is your duty as an American to arm yourselves for protection against the have nots, whom will not work
Posted by beehive21 at 10:34 AM : Mar 15, 2008

But how will I protect myself and my children from bonehead illiterates like you and libsrweak?

[guysdigdirt]

Guns cause crime like spoons make people fat.
Posted by gunownerdan

Saw a shirt like that on a lady...

Guns kill people like
Spoons made Rosie fat.

I followed her around the mall for a few minutes and it was interesting, everyone who I could tell read it, nodded in agreement, laughed, or both.

[guysdigdirt]

The 2nd amendment does not grant a citizen the right to own a firearm for protection, it protects the right that is an essential right of all human beings that are law abiding.

[sevenveils]

Well said gunownerdan

[gunownerdan]

Guns cause crime like spoons make people fat.

[likeitis5050]

Criminals will always find a way to have the upper hand in assault, robbery, and murder....always. If they can''t get their hands on guns, they will create poison gas...when gas masks are no longer available they will chip away at rock to make spears...they think differently than law abiding people and removing any means for the law abiding people to defend themselves is criminal. But until enough lawmakers have become prey they will continue to hang us out as easy pickens for predators.

[ov442]

Gun bans dont work unless A) a large area surrounding also has a gun ban. and B) you allow the police to use tactics to slowly clean itup after a few years.

In this case, guns are still flowing so the gun ban had little effect in the long run, it just allowed new rivers of weapons to flow into either criminals'' hands or law abiding citizens'' hands.

In a city like Washington DC, they really need to just go door to door and car to car and do weapons sweeps and violate everyone''s rights and take them all or just deal with dead people every day.

There is no choice. Letting a small percent of citizens arm themselves isnt going to help. You''d have to arm them all, and you''d have to make every family guarentee all firearms have trigger locks and all get free training on use, storage, etc.

[payasyougo]

According to the 2006 census, DC has a black population of 56.5%. Comparing the DC murder rate to other states w/ demographics taken into account is a subject few want to broach.

Bottom line is, guns are not the core issue of the murder rate in DC.

There is a high probability that freeing up gun ownership in DC will NOT have as dramatic affect on the murder rate as in states with a lower black population (2006 data DC w/ 29.1 murders per 100k residents). 2006 data shows that VA was 20% black (w/ 5.2 murders per 100k) and MD was 30% black (w/ 9.7 murders per 100k).

The murder rate tracks linearly with percentage of black population at higher than a 1.0 gain.

This 2006 data is from the web.
DC pop=581,000, murders=169, %black=56.5
MD pop=5,615,727, murders=546, %black=29.5
VA pop=7,642,884, murders=399, %black=19.9

I''m a gun ownership advocate but in the case of DC, the data shows it probably won''t make a difference.

[l00ker]

Ban young black men.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Posted by Keithle1 at 11:50 AM : Mar 16, 2008



Well, that''s getting a little extreme, but I do see your point.

[l00ker]

No, DC''s gun ban has done nothing to prevent gun violence, because on average, a person is killed by gun violence in DC nearly every day. It''s not the guns; it''s the hands that they are in.

[keithle1]

Ban young black men.

[my2centss]

"The number of guns seized by police has surged in recent years, reaching 2,924 in 2007, nearly 1,000 more than in 2003."

Almost 3,000 gun crimes in a city with no guns. Too bad the article does not mention the numbers before and after the ban.

[gunownerdan]

Always remember, our second amendment is NOT about deer hunting,
it is about making sure that our freedom, our rights, our safety,
our property, our lives, and our constitution will always be protected
no matter what - especially when the government or the law fails!

GET EDUCATED:
http://www.a-human-right.com

Amendment II
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the
security of a free State, the right of the PEOPLE to
keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

"The militia of the United States consists of all able bodied
males at least 17 years of age.."
- U.S. Code Title 10, Section 311

"I ask, sir, what is the militia? It is the whole
people, except for a few public officials."
- George Mason

[gunownerdan]

"Today we need a nation of minute men; citizens who are not only prepared to take up arms, but citizens who regard the preservation of freedom as a basic purpose of their daily life and who are willing to consciously work and sacrifice for that freedom.
The cause of liberty, the cause of American, cannot succeed with any lesser effort."
- President John F. Kennedy, January 29, 1961

"Certainly one of the chief guarantees of freedom
under any government, no matter how popular and respected,
is the right of citizens to keep and bear arms ...
The right of citizens to bear arms is just one guarantee
against arbitrary government, one more safeguard, against
the tyranny which now appears remote in America but which
historically has proven to be always possible."
- Hubert H. Humphrey, Senator, Vice President, 22 October 1959

"The Second Amendment is a doomsday provision, one
designed for those exceptionally rare circumstances
where all other rights have failed -- where the
government refuses to stand for reelection and
silences those who protest; where courts have lost the
courage to oppose, or can find no one to enforce their
decrees. However improbable these contingencies may
seem today, facing them unprepared is a mistake a free
people get to make only once."
- Justice Alex Kozinski, US 9th Circuit Court, 2003

[nodemotwit]

Always interesting that liberals single out one of the Bill of INDIVIDUAL Rights and try to morph - just that one - into a STATE right. And if the latter really was the intent of the founding fathers, how did they allow such a gross violation of the Constitution as ''self defense'' to propagate across America from day one ?

The following are two examples of people who would have died, in the liberal vision of America, w/o their 2''nd Amendment right to self defense.

www.wfaa.com/sharedcontent/dws/wfaa/latestnews/stories/wfaa080214_lj_hawes.bfc57dff.html

www.kltv.com/Global/story.asp?S=7886169

Does anyone think a SC with common sense (ie: one NOT considering our Constitution as a ''living, breathing, interpret it on the whim-of-the-moment'' document) is going to deny the 2''nd Amendment right of these law abiding citizens to defend their lives with a firearm when set upon by criminals ?

Therefore, it is likely the SC will either pass on ruling on the lower courts DC Gun Ban case, in which case the DC Gun Ban falls, or the SC will validate the lower courts ruling, in which case the DC Gun Ban again falls. But in the latter case I hope their opinions also clarify/re-affirm that the Federal government does have the right to regulate the types of firearms that may be possessed, and that is the ruling I am hoping for. And, as a law-abiding gun owner, I would like to see the access to both firearms and ammunition by criminals and the mentally unstable minimized.

(cont)

[nodemotwit]

(cont)

To that end, what I would personally like to see is the Firearm part of the ATF take on some responsibilities that are similar to the Center of Disease Control (CDC). In the latter case, when someone contracts a population threatening disease (eg: tuberculoses), the CDC is, by law, notified by medical practitioners and acts A.R. to prevent the spread to the rest of the population. So, for the ATF, this would mean that :

** Medical practitioners would be required, by law, to report mentally unstable patients to the ATF in every case that they are deemed a threat to themselves or their family or the general population.
** The Armed services would be required, by law, to report any discharge from the service for mental problems.

Similarly, given the youth of many of these perps, a special case needs to be made wrt juvenile criminal records, specifically:

** Juvenile violent offenses would, by law, be reported to the ATF, and considered by the ATF until the age of 25, after which those records would be purged, unless those individuals developed an adult rap sheet involving more violent offenses by age 25.

THEN, the ATF, firearm dealers and gun show promoters would need to modernize their equipment such that both firearm and ammunition purchases are vetted by the ATF, online, w/128 bit encryption (ie: same security as CC purchases).

(cont)

[nodemotwit]

(cont)

And for those conservatives worried about tracking ammunition purchases, every purchasers name/address could be submitted by the gun shops computer along with a pool of randomly picked local state residents, with the ATF computer on the other end quickly (less that 1 second) providing an electronic thumbs up/down for each, with the gun shops computer then filtering out all but the intended buyer. If the ATF were to track in this scenario then it would appear, over time, that 100% of the states adult residents are purchasing ammunition.


Since we give medical data to the CDC to protect the general populace I do not think it is as big stretch to give similar data to the ATF to, again, protect the general populace.

=======================

Additionally, the ATF needs to set national standards within which the state governments can restrict the parameters of firearm ownership AND interstate transportation for
travel/vacation purposes.

** The former: To avoid DC-like scenarios, where self defense becomes a non-option. For example, states which wish to minimize clip capacity would have the single option of 10 rounds, nothing else. And truly self-defense threatening restrictions, like requiring a firearm to be disassembled and scattered into 4 corners of a house in individually locked
containers, or requiring a special tool to change a clip, like in CA, would be illegal per Federal law.

(cont)

[nodemotwit]

(cont)

** The latter: To avoid the imbecilic hodge-podge of different state firearm transportation rules across the US.


But this only addresses part of the problem. Some other aspects are that :

** In certain states, liberals encourage illegal immigration and, by default, the illegal documentation industries that enable the former, and therefore the ''drivers license as ID'' for gun/ammunition purchases, as vetted in such an ATF system/responsibility upgrade outlined above, would be much less robust. For this reason, National ID or similar protocols may be required.

** In certain states, human life has become too cheap. For example, the rap sheet of the perp Arthur Mann, who recently (Feb. 28th) got life in GA for shooting his ex-girlfriend, in public, shows that he was previously released after serving only FOUR years of a pathetic 10yr sentence for a prior murder in FL. I do not know if this is due to the liberal anthem of the ''perp is the victim'', or neocons who are too cheap to push for execution-or-life incarceration for murder, or maybe both, but FOUR years for murder ??
And even when these murderers are condemned to life in prison, what are they faced with ? A lifetime of :
__free medical care,
__free food
__bed with fresh linen
__air conditioning and heat
__exercise, and
__reading materials.

All at taxpayer expense.
Wow.
I bet Arthur Mann was in that GA courtroom, just begging for the death penalty.

(cont)

[nodemotwit]

(cont)

(As a side note, why is it OK to use DNA evidence to free a death row inmate, but not OK to use DNA evidence to put someone on death row ? And if DNA evidence can accelerate someone off death row quickly (and rightly so), why couldn%u2019t it also accelerate their execution, especially when multiple witness to the crime are also involved ? ).

** In certain states, conservatives have implemented what are known as Project Exile laws (eg: VA). Specifically, felons are already prohibited by Federal law from possessing firearms (which, of course, does not prevent them from doing so when they leave prison, eg: Arthur Mann), but, with Project Exile, a felon even being caught jaywalking while in possession of a firearm will result in a 5yr incarceration w/o parole. This should be made into a Federal law applicable to all states, whether the sates want it or not, but it would have to be prosecuted in Federal courts to not financially burden states.

=======================

(cont)