Fine...Now Move the Government to Peoria

When the kids were small, we lived on a 2-acre spread on the south edge of Bismarck. We had a little horse barn and 1 acre of pasture, which we rented to our friends Walter and Margaret. Walter was a successful insurance salesman who had the old cowboy image down pat. I never saw him without his big hat, string tie, and fancy boots. Margaret worked for one of the state departments up in the Capitol Building Monday through Friday, but after hours and on the weekends, she was a horsewoman and a champion barrel racer. They rode their horses for exercise every night after work, and when their ride was over and the horses were brushed and put into their stalls, Walter often would open the trunk of his big Cadillac and bring out beer for the grownups and watermelon for the kids. The kids were crazy about Walter and Margaret. They were kind and generous and affectionate with them. Katie's first words, spoken one evening when Margaret rode into the yard on her horse Fly, were "Hi, Margaret." None of us had heard her say much of anything--she got what she wanted by pointing and grunting, her shorthand way of communicating with her deaf mom--and when she came out with that, it caused a sensation. And after that, she just kept talking.

One evening, Walter and Margaret stopped by the house after their ride, and we sat on the back porch. Margaret told me that several of their friends in the horse club recently had lost saddles and other gear when their barns and stables had been broken into. She asked if I had noticed any strangers driving slowly past the house, and she wanted me to be aware that the possibility existed for burglary.

I asked Walter if he could recommend a handgun for me. I said that it made me nervous to be home alone with the kids during the week, and I thought maybe I should have a gun handy.

Walter said, "You don't want to kill anybody, do you?" I said no...it would be just to scare an intruder off. And he said, "Well, the only reason to have a gun like that is if you're going to kill somebody, and since you don't want to do that, then don't get a gun."

The end of last week, the Federal Appeals court ruled that the District of Columbia's law forbidding residents to keep handguns in their homes is unconstitutional. The suit was brought by six DC residents who say the law breaks the Second Amendment to the Constitution, which affirms U.S. citizens' right to bear arms. D.C. Major Adrien Fenty said he was "outraged" at the ruling. D.C. police harvested more than 2,000 illegal handguns last year, and Fenty plans to appeal the ruling.

Opponents of D.C.'s handgun laws, the most stringent in the country, say they are mostly ineffective. Handguns are readily available on the street to anyone who wants to avoid the registration provisions, and deaths by handguns made up the majority of homicides last year (137 out of 169 total). Not all of the handguns used in these murders were registered prior to 1976, one of D.C.'s first laws aimed at abating the flood of handguns here: if you are a D.C. resident, unless your handgun was registered prior to 1976, you may not keep it in your home. Silberman, the judge who wrote the majority opinion, noted that the black market for handguns in D.C. is so strong that it effectively means the only people who don't have ready access to handguns are the law-abiding citizens.

That last statement reminds me of all the pickups out in Bismarck. Most pickups had a gun rack in the back window, and many also had a bumper sticker that read "When Guns Are Outlawed, Only Outlaws Will Have Guns." Good, solid NRA fare for those who envision themselves blasting intruders away from home and hearth. But sensible people, even self-styled cowboys, know better.

I moved to D.C. in 1992. Peggy said, "Oh, Ma...Now I'm going to worry about you!" D.C. at that time had one of the worst images for crime in the U.S. I think it no longer was the "murder capital of America"--I think other cities had taken over that distinction. I was more worried about other things: getting run over by yuppies driving their SUVs and other gas-guzzling monstrosities through the stop sign in front of my house, or getting barked at by any of the ugly dogs kept in the neighborhoods around Gallaudet.

I walked a lot in those days. I sold my last car in 1991 when I was preparing to move eastward, and it was one of the happiest days of my life. Goodbye, gas, insurance, repairs, standing by the side of the road in high heels thumbing a ride when the car broke down. But I digress...

My late friend David lived in Capitol Hill, and I often walked to Union Station from his place after paying him a visit. I'd stop to rest on one of the park benches lining Pennsylvania Avenue where it intersects with North Carolina Ave. There's a little park there, and the benches are shaded from the broiling D.C. summer sun. And as I sat there, I noticed that on Friday afternoons, especially, young men in athletic jerseys and baggy jeans would park their old cars on one of the little side streets on the other side of Pennsylvania. And a steady stream of other young men wearing suits and ties would drive up in their Audis and BMWs, doublepark alongside the other young men, have a few words, shake hands, and then drive off. It didn't take me long to figure out I was seeing a piece of the marketplace in action. The drug marketplace. It doesn't take a rocket scientist, either, to figure out which of the two groups of young men paid the biggest price for this criminal behavior. Hint: It wasn't the guys in the suits and Beemers.

I think that we could clear up the crime and get rid of the handguns in D.C. if we did just one thing: Move the federal government someplace else. The drugs and the handguns would follow.