Cowboy Confessional

Things are about to get interesting in D.C., as if dodging bullets was not already the town’s primary pastime.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia decided not to hear an appeal on the Parker case, a 2nd Amendment challenge to the absolute handgun ban in D.C. (well, almost absolute — certain reviled but well connected people appear to be immune from the law).  The denial of an en banc (i.e., the full court) hearing means that the city has only one choice left if they want to preserve the ban — to appeal the case to the Supreme Court.

Court speculators are as divided as the Supremes would likely be on the outcome.  Most court watchers believe that the Supremes would sustain the lower court ruling (i.e., kill the gun ban) by a 5-4 margin.  This is significant because if the Supremes thus anointed the 2nd Amendment as an individual right, it would be the foundations for widespread deconstruction of state and local gun control ordinances from coast to coast.

And this is why I doubt the city will appeal to the Supremes.

Elected henchmen in D.C. are widely Democrat, largely liberal, and collectively beyond comprehension.  By nature and affiliation they are politically connected, and specifically connected to dishonorable outfits like the Brady Campaign and the Violence Policy Center.  Neither of these organization wants the current court to decide the issue because the downside is too big to risk.

How can we know this?  One indication are their web sites.  Within an hour of the news breaking on the VA Tech massacre, both outfits had updated their home pages with veiled hints that the killings could have been stopped with more gun control.  Yet a full working day after the circuit court denied an en banc hearing, their home pages say nothing about their position on the appeal.  This is dirty laundry they prefer to keep indoors.

Which leads us back to D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty, the man who will decide to appeal or not.  Like all politicians, Fenty has aspirations for higher office, which requires the support of friends.  If Sarah Brady and her hordes of developmentally disabled supporters apply pressure, and if that pressure is amplified by party loyalist from Diane Feinstein to Chuck Schumer, Fenty faces a big problem:  appeal against party will and lose the case, and he’ll be lucky not to be found floating downstream in the Potomac.  Abandon the appeal and he loses nothing except the local gun control issue, which may annoy some city residents, but is in the list of “forgivable” sins.

I don’t know Fenty personally, but surface reports position him as a man lacking stones large enough to forsake party and profit for principle, and I expect him to fold and cash in his chips on this particular gamble. It is better to annoy a town than a party and a country.

The cheerful upside for Fenty is the likelihood that he can, and will, turn this to his advantage.  In states that have liberalized and loosened their gun control laws, violent crime has gone down.  With the District being one of the most violent cities in America, Fenty has little to lose by allowing the ban to die.  If crime increases, he blames the courts and distant rednecks for the city’s ills, which is not far removed from his current talking points.  If crime goes down, he claims credit, hanging the results on inconsequential action he took.

If gambling were legal, I’d have an open $20 bet that this is as far as D.C. pushes the issue.

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