The city of Washington, D.C. has once again been told to quit violating the Second Amendment. Federal Judge Richard Leon ruled this week that the District’s current laws regarding firearm permits are likely in violation of the Constitution.
“The enshrinement of constitutional rights necessarily takes certain policy choices off the table,” Leon wrote.
Among those choices, Leon concluded, was putting gun permits to the kind of tests devised by the D.C. City Council. Under the current law, people are required to prove to the police department that they have an urgent need for protection before being issued a license. This is the end result of a longstanding feud between the liberals who run the capitol and the federal courts. Again and again, they are smacked down. Again and again, they try to put some weaselly clause in there, hoping that no one will notice.
“The District’s understandable, but overzealous, desire to restrict the right to carry in public a firearm for self-defense to the smallest possible number of law-abiding, responsible citizens is exactly the type of policy choice the Justices had in mind,” the judge wrote, referring to the Supreme Court’s 2008 Heller decision.
Judging by what’s transpired thus far, we should actually thank the D.C. lawmakers for expanding our gun rights as established by the courts. Every time someone sues them for violating the Second Amendment, our gun rights actually wind up stronger than they were before. Keep going, liberals! Fight, fight, fight!
But on second thought, we shouldn’t encourage them. The time may come that we have a Supreme Court packed with Justices who are hostile to the Constitution. And when that happens, we could see the opposite effect. The whims of a few coastal liberals could become the law of the land for everyone in America.
But why is any of this necessary? The Constitution is clear. The right to bear arms shall not be infringed. What the left is proposing these days doesn’t have a thing to do with “common sense,” like they claim. It’s an attempt to roll gun control so far forward that only the police are allowed to carry a weapon.
For that reason, we can’t just react to every liberal scheme. We need to push gun rights forward, just as they’re doing in Texas and elsewhere. The only way to secure our freedom is to keep pushing for more of it.
