D.C. Councilman Phil Mendelson will propose today tweaking the District’s gun laws to repeal the ban on handguns and allow residents to register and possess working, loaded firearms in their homes.
The bill that Mendelson will introduce responds to the explicit orders in last week’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling — that District residents have the constitutional right to maintain a working handgun in the home for self-defense. It does not tackle questions raised by the court’s decision, such as whether the District, under the Second Amendment, can continue to outlaw semiautomatic firearms.
Specifically, the proposed legislation would repeal the District’s 32-year-old prohibition of handguns, require a ballistic record of every handgun registered in D.C., and establish a self-defense exemption to the current rule that all firearms kept in the home remain “unloaded and either disassembled or bound by a trigger lock.”
A gun owner would not be in violation of the law, Mendelson said, if the handgun is ready-to-fire and “if they are immediately confronted with the need for self-defense.”
These are “short-term fixes,” Mendelson said, which will not come quickly: The bill will require two votes from the council, Mayor Adrian Fenty’s signature and a required 30-day congressional review before it becomes law.
There’s no need to rush, said Mendelson spokesman Jason Shedlock, as laws ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court are simply invalid within a matter of weeks and will no longer be enforced. The council can return during the summer recess to consider an emergency if it must.
Fenty directed Police Chief Cathy Lanier on Thursday to produce regulations within 21 days that facilitate handgun registration. The mayor’s order followed the release of the Supreme Court’s landmark ruling, which conferred a right to bear arms on most American citizens, obliterated D.C.’s handgun law as overly restrictive, and set into motion a series of legal challenges against other cities’ gun control statutes.
“Nothing will happen in the next 21 days, but the council intends to start taking action very, very soon,” Council Chairman Vincent Gray said Monday during his monthly press briefing.
Gray said he needs the summer break to work out where to draw the line between relaxing D.C.’s firearm regulations to meet the court’s ruling and still maintaining tough restrictions on gun registration and possession.
“I think we have an obligation in a constitutionally sound manner to get us close to where we are now,” Gray said.
