-By Warner Todd Huston
If you are a legal gun owner with a clean record in Washington D.C., you are going to be treated like criminal anyway as the District intends to institute a new gun control measure that will require every legal gun owner to be fingerprinted, give mug shots, and have criminal background checks performed all at their own cost, too.
D.C.’s new laws are set to take effect on January 1, and would seem to be overly intrusive and unconstitutional. Residents have until December 15 to have their say on the law, but it won’t likely make much difference if every citizen in the District complained. Our rulers don’t care what we think. They know better.
Imagine if journalists were treated this way in order to observe their First Amendment rights?
What does this new system of registration mean? It means if you refuse to participate and don’t re-register your firearms and pay all your new fees in the upcoming year you will be considered a criminal for owning a gun… in the Nation’s Capitol, yet, the very place where the original Constitution document is housed!
Currently, along with the other fees, police intend to charge a $13 per gun fee. So, for every gun you own another $13 will be piled upon you.
Interestingly, last year the District’s police chief argued against having a three year renewal period on gun registration because she didn’t have the resources to continually re-register firearms owners. She was arguing for a five year period instead.
Of course, having fingerprints of gun owners does nothing at all to help police. There simply isn’t any legitimate reason for fingerprinting to be done.
The new rules are already being challenged in court, of course.
“Re-registration is onerous and completely unnecessary and is a trap for the unwary,” said attorney Stephen P. Halbrook. “Fail to re-register for whatever reason, and you’re committing a crime — possession of an unregistered firearm. This is plain harassment for exercise of a constitutional right.”
The main reason none of this will help stop crime? Criminals won’t voluntarily go to a police station and register the guns they use during their criminal actions! This law is simply and only a means to harass legal gun owners. That is its only purpose.
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“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson
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Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and before that he wrote articles on U.S. history for several small American magazines. His political columns are featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com, BigHollywood.com, and BigJournalism.com, as well as RightWingNews.com, MrConservative.com, CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, Wizbang.com, among many, many others. Huston has also appeared on Fox News, Fox Business Network, CNN, and many local TV shows as well as numerous talk radio shows throughout the country.
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