Deneen Borelli
2008-03-19 07:00:00.0
Current rank: Not ranked

WASHINGTON -

Even before [guns] were completely banned, the District of Columbia’s open hostility toward the Second Amendment was evident. For example, registered handguns prior to 1976 were not allowed to be carried from one room to another within the same home unless the gun owner had a license for each room.

Shotguns or rifles had to be unloaded and either unassembled or trigger-locked. ...

Besides violating the Second Amendment, D.C.’s gun ban is a violation of the fundamental rationale of law.

In “The Law,” noted political theorist Frederic Bastiat wrote: “It is evident, then, that the proper purpose of law is to use the power of its collective force to stop this fatal tendency to plunder instead of to work.

All the measures of the law should protect property and punish plunder.”

[But] D.C. promotes the opposite, effectively protecting the plunderer and punishing the property owner.

Looters, for example, know it’s easier to steal another man’s property than to earn their own.

When government can’t perform a basic function like protection, it’s naturally up to the citizens to defend their property.

The duty becomes harder when the property owner is hobbled by things like Washington’s ban on gun ownership.

Read more at www.nationalcenter.org.