Contributed by: filbert Friday, July 18 2008 @ 09:23 AM CST
Assuming he is not disqualified from exercising his Second Amendment rights, the District MUST PERMIT Heller to register his handgun and must issue him a license to carry it in the home.
(Emphasis added.)
District of Columbia, dutifully submitting to the authority of the U.S. Supreme Court, promptly denies a gun permit to Dick Heller[*1] .
USA TODAY’s Kevin Johnson reports that the District of Columbia refused this morning to register a handgun on behalf of the security guard whose legal challenge resulted in last month’s landmark Supreme Court ruling[*2] on the Second Amendment.
Dick Heller was one of two applicants who were waiting at police headquarters when the doors opened to prospective gun owners at 7 a.m. ET. Officers wouldn’t let him register a semi-automatic handgun because local laws still ban such weapons.
Wait, what?
What do you think “must permit Heller to register his handgun” is supposed to mean? “Oh, sorry, Mr. Heller, not the handgun the Supreme Court was talking about . . . some OTHER handgun. Yeah, that’s the ticket!”
In case you’re wondering, a “semi-automatic” weapon is one where a round is automatically chambered after the previous round is fired. This is opposed to a single-fire weapon, where each round must be chambered (think of the ominous shink-shink of shotguns in an action movie) or a full-automatic weapon, where rounds are chambered and fired continuously when the trigger is pulled. Most firearms in private use are semi-automatic.