Friday, November 29,
2002
WASHINGTON � A Second
Amendment group is filing a lawsuit demanding that the
nation's capital ease up its gun laws, which are considered
the most restrictive in the nation.
The
CATO Institute, a public policy research group that bases its
work on libertarian principles, is crafting a legal
challenge to Washington, D.C.'s law, claiming that all
Americans have the right to defend themselves.
"The Second Amendment provides an
individual right for a person to bare arms, not a collective
right, not a right of the states, not a right of the militia,
but a right on each and every person," said Bob Levy, a senior
fellow in constitutional studies at CATO.
Washington, D.C. law states that it is
illegal for anyone to own a handgun unless he or she is a
police officer or has owned a gun registered prior to
1976.
Even those people allowed to possess a gun
must keep it unloaded.
"That doesn't deter criminals at all," Levy
said. "Somebody who is not deterred by laws against murder,
they're hardly going to be deterred by laws that say you can't
have a gun. So in D.C., you have a combination, on the one
hand, the most severe gun laws in the nation, and on the other
hand, one of the highest murder rates in the nation."
Supporters of of the D.C. laws,
however, say the vast majority of gun violence is not the
result of people defending themselves, but comes from
criminals committing homicide.
"This idea that more guns equals less crime
is flat out wrong. The truth is more guns equals more crime
and it's as obvious as the nose on my face," said Matthew
Nosanchuk of the Violence Policy Center.
Nosanchuk also points out that most of
the guns used in D.C. crimes come from neighboring states.
"If you look at the guns used in crime in
the District and trace them to their origin, how many of those
guns came from D.C.? Virtually none of them, they all came
from Virginia and other states with much less restrictive gun
laws than D.C. has," he said.
But Levy said that the only people being
denied guns are law abiding citizens. And he argues that the
numbers skew in favor of those using them lawfully.
"All of the evidence that has been
introduced suggests that guns are used about 2 million times a
year for defensive purposes. There are only 500,000 gun
related acts of violence a year. So on a four to one
basis guns are more widely used for self defense than they are
for committing acts of violence. And that suggests that if we
had more guns in the hands of law abiding citizens we would
have less crime in D.C.," he said.
No timeframe has been set for the legal
challenge, which will be filed on behalf of several D.C.
residents who feel they are in danger because the law prevents
them from owning a gun to protect themselves.
Fox News' Steve Centanni contributed to
this report. |