The home of the republic’s national government, the District of Columbia, has had a municipal government that, for many years, has suffered from a serious lack of understanding of four very simple words: “shall not be infringed.” Those words, of course, come from the Second Amendment, which states in part that the “…right of the people, to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”
The Trump administration’s Justice Department is now looking to correct that misunderstanding. The DOJ, on Monday, filed a lawsuit challenging the District’s senseless “assault weapons” ban.
The press release from the DOJ reads in part:
Today, the Justice Department sued the District of Columbia’s Metropolitan Police Department (MPD), alleging that the District government and MPD unconstitutionally ban the AR-15 and many other firearms protected under the Second Amendment. The District’s gun laws require anyone seeking to own a gun to register it with D.C. Metro Police. However, the D.C. Code provides a broad registration ban on numerous firearms — an unconstitutional incursion into the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens seeking to own protected firearms for lawful purposes. MPD’s current pattern and practice of refusing to register protected firearms is forcing residents to sue to protect their rights and to risk facing wrongful arrest for lawfully possessing protected firearms.
In light of the Bruen decision, this seems an obvious next move for anyone who understands the Second Amendment. If anyone in this country, after all, should have the full and unfettered constitutional rights guaranteed to them, it should be people in the nation’s capital.