Fallout from Heller decision

There is likely to be a vote in the House this week on a bill to liberalize D.C.'s still restrictive gun laws, enacted temporarily in the wake of the D.C. v. Heller decision by the Supreme Court, but it's unlikely to mean very much. A Mississippi Democrat has introduced legislation -- Congress still controls D.C. though there is some limited home rule allowed -- to eliminate the registration requirements and allow semiautomatic weapons. And last week a committee approved a bill to give D.C. 90 days to come up with laws that comply with the Heller decision without specifying what they should be.

But it's political posturing. Certain conservative Democrats want to be able to vote against restrictive gun laws before the election in November, and since they were a key part of the Dem takeover in 2006, Nancy Pelosi will let them. But the Senate is almost certain not to act, so it won't mean much if anything in terms of actual law.

D.C. gun ban lifted -- sort of

In response to the Supreme Court's D.C. v. Heller decision, which declared correctly that gun ownership is an individual right that doesn't have to be connected to a militia and D.C.'s outright ban on handgun ownership was therefore unconstitutional, the D.C. City Council has eliminated the outright ban -- but kept in place a series of restrictions likely to draw future legal challenges. The D.C. law that had required long guns to be unloaded, disassembled or trigger-locked was applied to handguns also. They must remain inside homes. Eye and written exams are required to register one. Officials gave out 58 applications the first day but registered only one gun.

I haven't talked to Bob Levy, who financed and masterminded the case that resulted in the Heller decision, but while the court's decision explicitly left some leeway for restrictions on handgun ownership, Scalia most prominently mentioned not allowing felons or the mentally ill to have guns legally, as well as perhaps proficency requirements. I suspect that the disassembled requirement will be challenged and won't stand up. But then predicting Supreme Court decisions is something of a fool's game. In any event it will take a long time and quite a few court cases to determine the real extent of the Second Amendment right.