SCORE ONE FOR GUN RIGHTS

A federal judge rules that the D.C. ban on carrying handguns outside the home is unconstitutional

Federal judge Frederick Scullin ruled Saturday that the Washington D.C.'s ban on carrying handguns outside the home is unconstitutional. Judge Scullin said:

There is no longer any basis on which this Court can conclude that the District of Columbia's total ban on the public carrying of ready-to-use handguns outside the home is constitutional under any level of scrutiny. Therefore, the Court finds that the District of Columbia's complete ban on the carrying of handguns in public is unconstitutional.

The judge ordered the city to allow residents to carry handguns outside their homes and to let non-residents carry them as well.

The case, Palmer et al v. District of Columbia et al, was filed five years ago. In 2008, the Supreme Court ruled that D.C.’s total ban on handguns violated the Second Amendment. An appeals court ruled in 2011 that all handguns in D.C. must be registered.

You can bet your life that the gun control crowd will appeal Judge Scullin’s ruling. And it wouldn’t surprise me at all if Obama’s Justice Department joined in to support the appeal as a friend of the court.