This was the obvious outcome, this needs to be left to the legislature and not to nine oligarchs. People's lives will be threatened and police and criminal courts won't know what to do.

Posted by joe

We wish it COULD be left to the legislature, City Council, but they blew it. They passed a patently Unconstitutional restriction on the Peoples' Right to Keep and Bear Arms. Four and a half of those oligarchs got it wrong by denying that Right; they were being dishonest and not merely mistaken. The half oligarch being Kennedy.

The legislature, councils and such do not have the authority to disband those portions of our Constitution they do not like. That is why we call it a Constitution."People's lives will be threatened". And how safe are those people now in a city with the nations harshest gun laws? Not very; Mayor Fenty and friends have given the criminals free reign. No, the police can not protect you, they can only respond after they are called IF the bad guy lets you call.

Trust yourself and your fellow citizens; you have your best interest at heart. The Elitist officials in the world generally don't. Regardless of what you see on TV there are all kinds of policemen who support the People's Right to Keep and Bear Arms. Thousands of them teach gun safety and home defense and belong to that terrible, evil NRA. Trust yourself joe.

The 2nd amendment does not apply to cities, states or the federal government. It deliniates a natural right of people, of individuals which shall not be infringed. You do not have to register something you have a RIGHT to have and carry.

Posted by Zelsdorf Ragshaft III

I am happy to see there are other persons out there who have indeed read our history and the development of the Constitution and Bill of Rights. Just an awful lot our our people get their history from some rather dishonest books, movies and TV shows.

D.C.s onerous and dishonest licensing and registration process is just flat out wrong. It appears to be allowed to a degree by the recent Supreme Court Ruling. I imagine the Court put that language in to mollify the weakling Justice Kennedy.But the process is still an infringement on the citizens of D.C.

Phoenix, Arizona has a population about three times that of D.C. We have no licensing or registration of firearms, except for concealed carry, and we may carry open almost anywhere. Yet our murder rate is far lower; why is that? Could it be that the bad guy in D.C. knows his victims will be defenseless while in Phoenix he may well get shot?

Honest people do not need to know other honest people's business including whether they own guns.

"The trouble with gun owners... is they want to own guns..."

Owners of illegal guns in D.C., who would have been subject to jail most likely for being caught with one before Heller, can now get those guns permitted easily while those who obeyed the unconstitutional restrictions will now find it nearly impossible to get a legal gun in D.C. even though the SCOTUS just affirmed their right to do so?

This is amazingly perverse if so.

..this comment was directed a FFL holder who doesn't run a retail shop nor accepts walk in business, he only handles the legal delivery of firearms purchased from outside DC by appointment only..

Wasn't there an anti-gunner D.C. activist who got a FFL (to show how 'easy' and 'dangerous' it was)?
And isn't it illegal to get a FFL if you have no intention of using it in the legitimate business of selling and transferring firearms? Maybe D.C. residents should call this joker and demand that he handle the transfer on their purchases. That would be sweet, sweet justice.

Maybe BATFE should look into this guy. I can't remember his name.

[T]he Heller decision implied a willingness to revisit that issue (as has prevously been done with the First Amendment)...

Yeah. I'm looking forward to that opinion (if it ever comes) given Justice Thomas's (singular) view that the Establishment Clause of the 1st Amendment is not incorporated against the states:

In short, the view that the Establishment Clause precludes Congress from legislating respecting religion lacks historical provenance, at least based on the history of which I am aware. Even when enacting laws that bind the States pursuant to valid exercises of its enumerated powers, Congress need not observe strict separation between church and state, or steer clear of the subject of religion. It need only refrain from making laws “respecting an establishment of religion”; it must not interfere with a state establishment of religion. For example, Congress presumably could not require a State to establish a religion any more than it could preclude a State from establishing a religion [my emphasis] .

Justice Thomas, Concurrence, Cutter vs. Wilkinson, 2005.

I look forward to his reasoning if the question of the 2nd's incoporation comes before the Court.

I think the other commentors are right. The Second Amendment does not apply to the states, though the Heller decision implied a willingness to revisit that issue (as has prevously been done with the First Amendment):

With respect to Cruikshank's continuing validity on incorporation, a question not presented by this case, we note that Cruikshank also said that the First Amendment did not apply against the States and did not engage in the sort of Fourteenth Amendment inquiry required by our later cases. Our later decisions in Presser v. Illinois, 116 U. S. 252, 265 (1886) and Miller v. Texas, 153 U. S. 535, 538 (1894), reaffirmed that the Second Amendment applies only to the Federal Government.