Dash of Calabash

Dave Kopel at TCS Daily recently wrote about the Washington, DC gun ban and gun bans in general. Some highlights:

“Handgun bans exist in only half a dozen U.S. cities, because while gun control is sometimes popular, gun prohibition is not…. By the early 1990s, local handgun bans had been outlawed almost everywhere in the United States. One of the few states without a preemption law was Wisconsin, which bordered the one state where handgun bans existed. Yet even in left-leaning cities in the state, handgun prohibition was rejected: by 51 percent in Madison in 1993, then by 67 percent in Milwaukee and 73 percent in Kenosha in 1994…. In Europe, almost all nations allow the possession of licensed handguns. Of the exceptions—Russia, Luxembourg, England, Scotland, and Ireland—all but Ireland have murder and violent crime rates much worse than that of their neighbors and other nearby countries which don’t ban handguns…. “

Kopel concludes:

“ Millions of Americans own firearms and use them responsibly, and that right is guaranteed under the Second Amendment. The D.C. handgun ban is a very rare, extreme and unconstitutional prohibition. If the Supreme Court were to affirm the lower court’s decision against the handgun ban, it would end the shame of our nation’s capital city depriving its citizens of a right that legislatures and courts have protected almost everywhere else in the United States.”

Read the entire article here.

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 29th, 2007 at 7:11 am and is filed under Crime, Miscellaneous. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.