Harry Jaffe, The Examiner
2008-03-19 07:00:00.0
Current rank: Not ranked

WASHINGTON -

As pure theater, the oral arguments before the Supreme Court Tuesday on the constitutionality of D.C.’s handgun ban had a bit of everything. At first, the pomp and circumstance left me wide-eyed.

Clerks in gray morning coats and black vests gave the grand courtroom an 18th Century flair. Our very modern Mayor Adrian Fenty, with his polished crown, looked a bit out of place and sat about 10 rows back from the action. The justices were in character: Antonin Scalia uttered biting quips appropriate for a man who seemed impatient to blast something with his 12-gauge shotgun; Ruth Bader Ginsburg asked brainy questions about states’ rights; Clarence Thomas was mute during the entire 90-minute proceeding.

But in the end, as a longtime District resident, I couldn’t help but feel used by the people and the process. All the world may be a stage, but the sure-fire way to make an imprint on national affairs is to use the nation’s capital as your backdrop.

Remember when the first President George Bush staged a drug bust in Lafayette Square in order to launch his war on drugs? The undercover cops reportedly had to guide the dealer to the park across from the White House.

In this case, three lawyers with libertarian leanings found six local residents with similar sentiments to challenge the District’s decades-old handgun ban. In reporting on the case, I got to know most of the lawyers and litigants. Say what you will about the Second Amendment and whether it spells out an individual’s right to bear arms, the lawyers and their clients who challenged D.C.’s gun laws wanted to use the nation’s capital as a setting to achieve their ends of weakening gun regulations, nationwide.

Nothing wrong with that, of course. Americans march through our streets all the time to make political points. This time, however, the stage is also the setting for the bloodshed that local politicians want to stem by banning handguns.

Sitting in the press gallery, squashed in with dozens of well-dressed reporters, I couldn’t help but note that D.C.’s lawyer Walter Dellinger was almost 30 minutes into his presentation before anyone uttered the words “District of Columbia.” The justices, especially John Paul Stevens, were much more interested in arcane English laws and votes taken by state legislatures in 1790.

Even the protesters facing off in front of the Supreme Court didn’t represent local Washingtonians. There were National Rifle Association moms from Maryland and anti-handgun activists from the Brady Campaign, but few D.C. residents. Ronald “Mo” Moten, from the Peaceaholics, was the lone local activist.

The arguments inside the courtroom were often esoteric and irrelevant to the city whose laws might be overturned in the proceedings. It is almost impossible to figure the outcome from the arguments, but my very uneducated guess is the court overturns D.C.’s gun ban. A majority will side with “individual rights.”

And the individuals who live in the nation’s capital will have to live with it.