DC Attorney General Peter Nickels acts schizophrenic on constitutional rights

March 14, 8:38 PMDC Gun Rights ExaminerMike Stollenwerk

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DC AG Nickels

On March 3, 2009, the Washington Times reported that District of Columbia Attorney General Peter J. Nickels said that DC residents owning certain legally registered long guns will be barred from re-registering them in three years due to the DC City Council's quietly passed December 2008 amendments to DC's gun control statutes.  These changes make it unlawful to register long guns if the guns have certain features such as pistol grips even though long guns with pistol grips are in common use across the United States. 

But on March 11, 2009, Attorney General Nickels ordered corrections officials to ignore a DC law that prohibits the release of prisoners from jail between 10 p.m. and 7 a.m. because, said Nickels, "it is unconstitutional for authorities to jail someone overnight who is legally entitled to go free."   Nickels did this despite DC Councilman Phil Mendelson's long standing view that the Attorney General has no authority to "unilaterally" declare a DC law unconstitutional.

The irony of Nickel's actions is shocking.  Having unilaterally seized judge-like powers to strike down DC statutes without so much as a public hearing, Nickels chooses to safeguard prisoners' "rights" to be set  loose on a residential community in the wee hours of the morning, but refuses to block enforcement of an arbitrary gun registration scheme that makes residents of this same community give up their legally registered firearms they keep to defend their homes for some silly reason like pistol grips.

But there's more - apparently DC residents' legally registered handguns are also at risk.

On Thursday March 12, 2009 I called Attorney General Nickels' office to ask whether handguns now legally registered to DC residents would, like some registered long guns, become unregisterable in the future if at the time of required re- registration these handguns were not  on the California Roster of Handguns Certified for Sale (another quietly enacted requirement of the DC City Council last December is that no resident may register a handgun unless is it on this California Roster at the time of registration).  This is the same arbitrary roster of handguns which led last week to a federal lawsuit filed against DC by residents who were turned away from the police station's registration office because their commonly used handguns were not on this California Roster, including one handgun model which is on the Roster, but alas, is not the right color. 

Nickel's Press Secretary, Leslie Kershaw, told me she would try to get an answer.  A few hours later came her email:  "Mike, When is your deadline?" 

My reply:  "Leslie, Tomorrow (Friday) by end of day is when I would like to have a response if possible.  The column needs to go out Sat. or Sunday."

And now it's Saturday night, and no reply from Nickels' office.  This question was not hard to answer - it's either "yes," "no," or "we're not sure."

But what is sure is this - gun registration is largely unknown in America, and clearly constitutionally suspect ever since last year when the United States Supreme Court in D.C. v. Heller held that the right to keep and bear guns in common use was protected by the Second Amendment.  And as the Washington Post's Marc Fisher noted last week, after the Heller opinion was issued, "the [DC] council and mayor shot back with preposterously restrictive gun control rules -- essentially, a dare to the feds: Okay, we'll legalize gun ownership, but just try to leap over our new hurdles. Go ahead, try -- we'll sit back and laugh." 

In the end, District of Columbia Attorney General Peter J. Nickels' refusal to, in light of the Heller decision, block enforcement of the Council's "preposterously restrictive gun control rules," while at the same time striking down a common sense statute limiting  prisoner releases to daylight hours, shows Nickels to be a constitutional schizophrenic when it comes to guns.  And this goes to show once again it's time for Congress to tell DC's rulers:  If you wanna vote in America's House, no more gun registration!