WASHINGTON, DC- Police were ordered on Sunday to not arrest people carrying firearms after a judge ruled one of D.C.’s far reaching gun laws unconstitutional.
The order said that cops could not arrest D.C. residents carrying registered pistols and that people from out of state without felony records are also permitted to carry firearms.
U.S. District Judge Frederick J. Scullin Jr. ruled that the city must stop enforcement of the offending law until they were able to come up with a constitutionally valid method of providing carry permits.
In an interview with the Washington Post, Tom Palmer, one of the plaintiffs in the case, said that the D.C. government “Steadfastly refused to recognize the full text of the Second Amendment, which says ‘keep and bear,’” after the landmark Heller decision. The Heller decision, to which palmer was also a plaintiff, ruled that there is a constitutional right to be able to posses firearms in the home.
If the past is any indicator of the effect this ruling might have on D.C., the sky will not fall, but the crime rate might.
