Washington, D.C. is the nation’s political capital, but tragically it’s also known as America’s murder capital. In an effort to curb homicides, the city banned its citizens from owning handguns starting in 1975. More than 30 years later, the U.S. Supreme Court recently overturned the law, saying "the absolute prohibition of handguns" was unconstitutional. The decision sparked a legal chain reaction as similar lawsuits were filed in Chicago and San Francisco. Was this the right verdict for the safety of D.C. citizens and the nation?
In every state of the Union, citizens use guns effectively to defend themselves. Analyzing National Crime Victimization Survey data, award-winning criminologist Gary Kleck found, “robbery and assault victims who used a gun to resist were less likely to be attacked or to suffer an injury than those who used any other methods of self-protection or those who did not resist at all.”
In the 1990s, Kleck and Marc Gertz found that guns were used for self-protection about 2.5 million times annually. The late Marvin E. Wolfgang, self-described as “as strong a gun-control advocate as can be found among the criminologists in this country,” who wanted to “eliminate all guns from the civilian population and maybe even from the police,” said, “The methodological soundness of the current Kleck and Gertz study is clear. I cannot further debate it. . . . I cannot fault their methodology.”
A study for the Dept. of Justice found that 34 percent of felons had been “scared off, shot at, wounded or captured by an armed victim,” and 40 percent of felons have not committed crimes, fearing potential victims were armed.
D.C. residents should have the same opportunity to defend themselves as other Americans. The Supreme Court should say goodbye to the D.C. gun ban.
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