Gun Ban Obscures District's Real Crime Problem

By Tom Knott
The U.S. Supreme Court's justices are making noises that suggest they will restore the Second Amendment rights to residents of the nation's capital, as they should be. The D.C. Council imposed a handgun ban on its citizenry in 1976, ostensibly to save lives. The measure has not worked out as envisioned, predictably enough. The nation's capital earned the dubious distinction of being the nation's murder capital in the early '90s, when the violence spiked because of the crack epidemic. The number of murders in the city peaked at 479 in 1991. There were 181 murders in the city last year, with more and more neighborhoods in the city undergoing gentrification and some of the violent crime spilling over into Prince George's County. Read more...

Posted by Editor at March 21, 2008 04:42 PM