The D.C. Council adopted emergency legislation Wednesday allowing residents to register semiautomatic handguns and keep the weapons unlocked and loaded in their homes and businesses.
The U.S. House of Representatives, meanwhile, was poised to pass National Rifle Association — and White House-backed legislation that would essentially wipe out the District’s firearm laws, to the dismay of D.C. leaders.
“There’s every reason to think we’re moving in the direction of responsible solutions to this,” Council Chairman Vincent Gray said. “We have the capability to make responsible decisions, and we should be allowed to do so.”
Wholesale changes to the District’s gun laws come three months after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the city’s 32-year-old handgun ban.
The council’s unanimous vote Tuesday to ease restrictions on firearm ownership — allowing semiautomatics instead of only revolvers — was an attempt not only to comply with the high court ruling, but also to head off impending congressional action.
“I would hope that in the rational debate Congress would be mindful that we have dealt with the most important issues they and others have raised,” said at-large Councilman Phil Mendelson, who drafted the legislation in consultation with Mayor Adrian Fenty’s administration.
The House was nevertheless advancing a gun rights measure offered by Rep. Travis Childers, D-Miss. Backed by 50 conservative Democrats, most Republicans, the NRA and the White House, the Childers bill would abolish gun registration requirements, eliminate the ban on semiautomatics and allow D.C. residents to purchase guns in Maryland or Virginia.
There is no reason for Congress to give the District “even more time to drag its feet and remain noncompliant with the directives of the highest court in this land,” said Rep. Pete Sessions, R-Texas, who led an assault on gun restrictions implemented by D.C. Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton accused the NRA of endangering the public, including the president, and “pointing a proverbial gun” at the re-election of her fellow Democrats.
Rep. James McGovern, D-Mass., described the Childers amendment as “one big, fat, wet kiss to the National Rifle Association.”
The council’s emergency legislation lifts the ban on semiautomatic handguns, erases the requirement that all guns remain unloaded and either trigger-locked or disassembled — the “safe storage” provision — establishes a criminal penalty for gun owners who allow a child access to a firearm, permits guns in businesses, and removes the “one gun per household” rule.
