Death of gun ban leaves businesses defenseless

WASHINGTON (Map, News) - We have witnessed plenty of thrusts and parries and potshots since the Supreme Court gunned down the District’s “toughest in the nation” firearms ban a few weeks ago. Lawyers and politicians and zealots on both sides of the ever-heated issue of gun rights have been shooting off their mouths. Congress has been making mischief. The mayor and the D.C. Council have changed the local law to make it comply with the Supreme Court’s decision. Legal challenges will ensue.

One D.C. resident knows what to do.

“I’m going to the gun show Saturday,” Irving Parker told me yesterday. That would be the gun show at Prince George’s County’s Equestrian Center.

“I’m going to look around and see what I need,” Parker said. “Yes sir — I’m going to get me a gun.”

You don’t get much more D.C. than Irving Parker. If they were to build a monument to the generation of Washingtonians born and raised and schooled in the District during the 1950s and ’60s, a statue of the stout, square-shouldered Mr. Parker could take center stage.

He grew up in the neighborhoods just across the Anacostia River and worked in the family store — Suburban Market. And when his father, Sam Parker, was ready to step down, he handed down the storefront market on Sherriff Road, on the District’s eastern border by Prince George’s.

Every morning Parker opens the store for business; every day he wonders whether another gunman will walk through the door and put the wrong end of a barrel to his head. He’s survived at least two robberies.

“The police never come by,” Parker tells me. “I don’t have any protection from the criminals. I don’t need a gun at home. I need one here. What does the law say about a situation like mine? I’m sitting here in the dark.”

The light is harsh. Under the old law, neither residents nor business owners could register a handgun. The new law would allow residents to legally own a handgun and use it for self-defense, but business owners are still (self-) defenseless.

Stores get held up all the time. We often read about a shopkeeper shot in the course of a robbery. Judging from the flak already filling the air about the gun law, the fact that shop owners need protection will not be part of the conversation.

Instead, zealots will joust over inane and arcane disputes about whether D.C. has the right to ban semiautomatic weapons. My guess is this legal gunplay will occupy lawyers and judges for the next decade. Meanwhile, Irving Parker has already drawn his personal line of fire.

“I would rather be telling a judge why I did this or that,” he says, “as opposed to lying in a casket.”

A tough choice, but a logical one — which should be a legal one.

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