Scrambling to rewrite gun laws after the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed the right of individuals to bear arms (DC v. Heller), the District of Columbia Council voted to end the most restrictive anti-gun laws in the nation and replace them with new restrictions.
The new legislation, according to an Associated Press report, is designed to follow the letter rather than the spirit of the ruling: Handguns will be permitted but can only be used in the home for self-defense. They cannot fire more than 12 rounds without reloading, which the city of Washington, DC, oddly defines as "machine guns." Effective self-defense is further sabotaged by rules requiring that all guns be unloaded, disassembled, or equipped with trigger locks.
Of course, exceptions have been made for police, FBI, U.S. Marshals, Secret Service agents, myriad other legal gun-toting bureaucrats such as Federal Egg Inspectors, and vicious criminals who never obey laws anyway.
(No mention is made whether the over-12-bullet ban applies to the six-guns used by matinée cowboys such as Roy Rogers, Gene Autry, and Hopalong Cassidy in their heyday. As every child of that era knew, their six-shooters could fire up to 27 times without reloading.)
However, muckraking investigative reporter Max Prober of BlabberCast News has been covering the council closely. It seems that the councilcrats are determined to apply the same approach to other Constitutional rights that threaten the safety of District citizens.
In new legislation, free speech will be allowed in the District, but only if such verbal communication is used for self-defense in the home and consists of fewer than 12 words at a time.
For example, if masked gunmen break down the front door, the homeowner may legally use a 12-word defensive response such as "Don't shoot me! You can take my stereo! I don't have a ... ."
Rapid-fire speech that delivers up to 12 words without pausing for breath, as heard on television infomercials when selling potato peelers and electric nose-hair trimmers, will be banned as "machine-gun delivery."
Freedom of the press, while acknowledged as a Constitutional right, will henceforth be handled in a similar manner. All reading material in excess of 12 words, including newspapers, magazines, libertarian polemics, operating instructions for electric nose-hair trimmers, and brochures explaining self-examination techniques for colorectal cancer must be unstapled, have cover locks like teenage diaries, or be kept in the bottom of locked birdcages.
Sticky notes and "Hello My Name Is" tags will be exempt from the new law.
Applying the same rules to freedom of religion is a bit trickier. The Ten Commandments and the Twelve Days of Christmas will obviously be legal, but prayer books and hymnals may have no more than 12 entries. The books of the Bible must be pared down to 12 or fewer to be legal. That means the Old Testament of the King James Version will end with 2 Kings, while the New Testament will terminate at Colossians.
This will eliminate Revelation. While Christians will miss the Rapture, Bible-control advocates point out that worshippers will be spared the fear of Apocalypse. Protecting people, after all, is the whole point of both gun control and canon control.
However, Bibles may be kept in the home strictly for self-defense purposes. (If masked gunmen break down the front door, the homeowner may legally pray out loud: "God help me! You can take my stereo! I don't have a ... .")
Otherwise, they must have no loaded words, always be dissembling, or secured with a Bible belt.
Upon entering paradise, Muslim suicide bombers will be allowed no more than 12 virgins (as opposed to the promised 72), and Hindu scripture praising the 1,000 names of God will constitute a capital felony.
Former gun-banners and fellow "living document" Constitutionalists hail the attempts by the DC Council to circumvent the Constitution as forward-looking, insightful, and progressive.
Garry Reed is a longtime advocate of the libertarian philosophy of non-coercion that espouses personal autonomy and individual responsibility, civil rights and economic liberty, maximum freedom and minimum government. His Web site is (http://www.freecannon.com).
