Self-defense in the District.

ITEM: The Boston Phoenix for June 24-30 expressed concern that U.S. senators "want to pack heat in [the] capital," and poked fun at Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas) because she "can't even keep a .357Magnum in her house." For 12 years, chided the Phoenix, she "has managed to abide this without complaint, but apparently she's had enough. In May, she filed a bill to overturn DC's gun-control laws, and this week she indicated that she has more than 30 co-sponsors and intends to push it to the floor for a vote in the near future. The bill would, in one swoop, negate all the gun laws the district has adopted over the past 30 years, including pre-purchase criminal-background checks and bans on semi-automatic weapons and cop-killer bullets."

Continued the Phoenix report: "'One would hope that the Congress would have better things to worry about than flooding the nation's capital with guns,' says Sean Tenner, chairman of DC for Democracy, which lobbies" for DC-statehood rights. 'But I've been wrong before.'"

CORRECTION: This account is trying to muddy the issue of the self-protection rights of District citizens by sneering at federal legislators who want to "pack heat." However, the real point is not about weapons for members of Congress. As noted last year by John R. Lott, Jr., a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute: "It is one of the benefits of being a politician. While handguns are banned for citizens in Washington, D.C., congressmen are allowed to have a gun for self-protection on the Capitol grounds. Liberal politicians such as Senators Chuck Schumer and Ted Kennedy have armed bodyguards."

Of course, there are already plenty of handguns in D.C. The criminals have them, while the law-abiding citizenry has been effectively disarmed. Because of the draconian laws in the District, it is a felony for Washingtonians to own a handgun.

Dr. Robert Levy, a senior fellow of constitutional studies at the Cato Institute, testified before the House Committee on Government Reform on June 28: "Even those pistols registered prior to the District's 1976 ban cannot be carried from room to room in the home without a license, which is never granted. Moreover, all firearms in the home, including rifles and shotguns, must be unloaded and either disassembled or bound by a trigger lock. In effect, no one in the District can possess a functional firearm in his or her own residence. The law applies not just to 'unfit' persons like felons, minors, or the mentally incompetent, but across the board to ordinary, honest, responsible citizens."

The contention that this gun ban has led to more safety is ludicrous on its face. The ban has helped to make Washington one of the most violent cities in the nation. For cities with over a half-million people, Washington regularly contends for the title of the "murder capital" of the nation.

Crime got measurably worse when handguns were outlawed. John Lott has pointed out that crime "rose significantly after the gun ban went into effect. In the five years before Washington's ban in 1976, the murder rate fell from 37 to 27 per 100,000. In the five years after it went into effect, the murder rate rose back up to 35. During these same times, respectively, robberies fell from 1,514 to 1,003 per 100,000 and then rose by over 63 percent, up to 1,635. The five-year trends are not some aberration. In fact, while murder rates have varied over time, during the almost 30 years since the ban, the murder rate has only once fallen below what it was in 1976." Not long ago, the District's murder rate reached 46 per 100,000.