Guns Are Now LEGAL In Washington DC?

On Friday, Judge Laurence Silberman of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled that the city of Washington D.C. could not ban its citizens from owning firearms because such a ban violates the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

In light of this ruling so damaging to gun grabbers everywhere, I was curious to see how the wires were handling the news. Turns out, they don’t seem too happy.

In two reports on Friday the AP gave far more time in their “balanced” report to opponents to Second Amendment rights than they did to proponents. Worse, it never seemed to occur to them to report that gun violence in Washington D.C. has consistently ranked as among the highest in the country despite being one of the strictest anti-gun cities therein.

In their short report on the ruling, the AP even casts the quote of an unnamed N.R.A. official and Second Amendment supporter in negative terms.

An official of the National Rifle Association says the decision gives D-C “a crack in the door to join the rest of the country” in what he calls “full constitutional freedom.”

You can just hear the venom in their “in what he calls” line. Of course, D.C. Mayor Fenty’s critical comments were reported straight with no qualifying terms applied.

The APs longer report on the ruling was even more interesting.

They quoted the dissenting judge, Karen Henderson, as saying the Second Amendment doesn’t apply in D.C. because “it is not a state”. Here they make no comment on what this could men if taken to its fullest extent: that the Constitution is entirely null and void in D.C. because it “is not a state”. But, they do go out of their way to explain the “reasonable restrictions” on gun ownership.

Such restrictions might include gun registration, firearms testing to promote public safety or restrictions on gun ownership for criminals or those deemed mentally ill.

So, it’s “reasonable” to help explain the gun grabber’s “reasonable restrictions”, but NOT reasonable to give Second Amendment supporters even one line in the larger story to air their points.

Reuters also got into the anti-gun game with their report.

In a fairly long report that reveals the “outrage” and “disappointment” and “criticism” of the ruling, Reuters only had room for one line devoted to supporters of this ruling.

Additionally, Reuters seemed to want to intimate that Judge Silberman was but a puppet of the Bush administration.

Silberman embraced the position that the Bush administration has advocated—that the Second Amendment protects an individual’s right to keep and bear arms.

Guess it couldn’t just be judge Silberman’s honest opinion, huh? I have never seen an AP or Reuters report that claimed that a ruling from the left was a result of the “Clinton Administration” embracing an idea. No, when the decision comes from the left it is merely reported as a decision and is never linked with any left leaning power structure.

As I briefly mentioned above, it is interesting that not one of the reports I’ve come across mentions that Washington D.C. has consistently ranked as one of the most dangerous cities in America despite its draconian gun banning laws.

In 2005, for instance, Washington DC was among the top five most dangerous US cities with a population of 500,000 or more.

Interesting how no mention is made of this fact. Interesting how the high crime rate is never contrasted with the gun ban laws. Of course, we know why. If these facts were ever brought together it would make a joke out of the very idea of gun bans. After all, if D.C. has the most strict gun laws in the country, why are they still so dangerous a place to be?

Shhhh. Let’s just keep that inconvenient little fact to ourselves, eh? We’ll have to, anyway. Because neither Reuters nor the AP will help spread the truth it seems.