Bush Administration Backs DC Gun Ban : Dispatches from the Creation Wars

ScienceBlogs Book Club: Inside the Outbreaks

Profile

Ed Brayton is a journalist, commentator and speaker. He is the co-founder and president of Michigan Citizens for Science and co-founder of The Panda's Thumb. He has written for such publications as The Bard, Skeptic and Reports of the National Center for Science Education, spoken in front of many organizations and conferences, and appeared on nationally syndicated radio shows and on C-SPAN. Ed is also a Fellow with the Center for Independent Media and the host of Declaring Independence, a one hour weekly political talk show on WPRR in Grand Rapids, Michigan.(static)

Search

Other Information

Ed Brayton also blogs at Positive Liberty and The Panda's Thumb

Ed Brayton is a participant in the Center for Independent Media New Journalism Program. However, all of the statements, opinions, policies, and views expressed on this site are solely Ed Brayton's. This web site is not a production of the Center, and the Center does not support or endorse any of the contents on this site.

Ed's Audio and Video

Declaring Independence podcast feed

YearlyKos 2007

Video of speech on Dover and the Future of the Anti-Evolution Movement

Audio of Greg Raymer Interview

E-mail Policy

Any and all emails that I receive may be reprinted, in part or in full, on this blog with attribution. If this is not acceptable to you, do not send me e-mail - especially if you're going to end up being embarrassed when it's printed publicly for all to see.

My Ecosystem Details

« Huckabee's Stunning Statement | Main | Happy Religious Freedom Day »

Bush Administration Backs DC Gun Ban

Posted on: January 16, 2008 9:09 AM, by Ed Brayton

This is a bit surprising. The LA Times reports that Solicitor General Paul Clement has filed a brief in the Supreme Court's case regarding the DC gun ban arguing that while the DC gun ban probably goes too far, some forms of gun control are necessary and constitutional. The brief is essentially an argument for the court not to go to far, to restrict their ruling to the specifics of the DC policy rather than making a broader conclusion that might affect Federal gun control laws. A lot of conservative groups are not gonna like that at all.

Comments

Dubya has a personal stake in keeping guns out of DC. Many of the residents there are likely to point them at him.

Posted by: Mike O'Risal | January 16, 2008 11:02 AM

insofar as this brief is exactly what you claim it is, i'm not sure it's needed. the DC circuit left a wide-open field for the supremes to hand down a narrow ruling, to claim basically that de facto bans are the only thing clearly unconstitutional but other measures may still be debated, and i'm sure they did so quite deliberately.

insofar as this brief is (is it?) a form of pressure by the executive on the judiciary to rule one way as opposed to another, yeah, that even i would object to. i wonder how it will be interpreted, in practice.

BTW, federal gun control laws; there aren't a huge lot of them, comparatively speaking. there's the 1968 Gun Control Act as amended (mainly by the Brady bill, as itself amended), the no-felons-in-possession rule (which i believe is in the GCA), the domestic violence misdemeanors exclusion that caught a lot of folks ex post facto when it was passed, a bunch of importation and manufacturing rules, and the NFA as amended.

of those, i suspect the only really big deal is the effective ban on machineguns (NFA, amended by the 1986 FOPA poison pill that closed the registry). now, overturning the NFA entirely would be a nightmare all around, but the only bit in there that can really be considered a ban is the fact that the NFRTR is closed. (no more machineguns can enter the civilian market, you wanna play with one of those, you gotta find one that was there in 1986.)

well... that registry could be reopened, push come to shove. sure, some lobbyists would scream, but it'd reverse the one huge example of a federal gun registry that turned into a backdoor ban; it might do a lot to reassure people that registration might not mean banning after all. would that really be so bad?

Posted by: Nomen Nescio | January 16, 2008 12:48 PM

This is a bit surprising.

I don't know why. Surely no one still thinks the Bush Administration is committed to any of the traditional Republican positions on anything, other than making sure the rich get richer quicker.

Posted by: Bobby | January 16, 2008 10:18 PM

The fact that DC is a majority _black_ town just "might" have something to do with it.

First raise paranoia about "scary knee-grows running around with guns!"

Then parlay it into a generalized ruling.

Then apply it selectively against areas where people might get "uppity."

New Orleans after Katrina was, IMHO, a test run. Work out the practicalities before going for the legal rationalizations. Oh yeah, another black town. Hmm. But don't think it'll stop there. Get people used to firearm confiscations, and they won't raise a peep when it happens in their town.

Posted by: g510 | January 17, 2008 12:49 PM