In the News

It's all over the news that the US Supreme Court has overturned Washington D.C.'s handgun ban, which is being touted as a major victory for George Bush. Although the ruling was tight (5-4), the wording on the decision has left a lot of room for overturning other stringent gun control legislation - which has gun rights activists thrilled and gun control fans shaking in their boots. Seems the whole gist of the thing is that we are allowed to have guns for "personal defence", and that it's probably hard to defend yourself and your home if you have to un-do a trigger lock, reassemble a gun from different parts or go buy ammunition before you shoot your attacker. Now, I'm not going to use my blog for a soapbox on this issue (ha - bet you thought that's where this was going, didn't you!). Instead, I brought this here as a response to a less significant part of these legal proceedings:

In this article from the Associated press, the last paragraph talks about the reason for the court case in the first place: Washington D.C. gun-rights activists argued that the ban prevented residents from defending themselves in the dangerous DC neighborhoods. The response from the D.C. government was (quoting the article) "The Washington government says no one would be prosecuted for a gun law violation in cases of self-defense."

Um, am I the only one who thinks that there is another problem here? So, it's illegal to own a handgun, to have one in your home at all. If you're found with one just lying around you could be subject to a fine or even jail time. But if you shoot someone with it, well then you're okay as long as it's self defence. This is like one of those stupid rules your parents had when you were growing up that made no sense at all and always felt random when you got busted on it. You remember the one they usually explained with "because I'm the mommy, that's why!".

I think that this whole "well, it's the law, but we don't really enforce it all of the time" thing is all over our country, and I think it's a HUGE part of our problem. Law is law, rules are rules. If you break them, you get busted. "Loop-holes" are how WAY too many criminals end up on the streets in this country. "Yeah, well you see, members of the jury, I had to pop that no- good drug-dealing dude's a#! because he had a gun to MY head. You see I was out of dope..." Yeah - the magic self defence. Now they get off of the murder rap AND the gun charge.

I say we get rid of any law we don't intend to enforce, replace it with laws that make sense and we can make work. There's nothing harmless or innocuous about silly laws - just think, anyone could be arrested at any moment and jailed for having more than one dildo in their house (because the Arizona law doesn't even define what a dildo is).

Now if only the Supreme Court decision had said something like "your law is dumb - make a better one".