Lawyer Who Wiped Out D.C. Ban Says It's About Liberties, Not Guns

He can afford to.

In the interview, Levy recalled his working-class roots in the Petworth area of Northwest Washington, where his parents ran a small hardware store. If there was a gun under the counter or in their home, he said, he never saw it.

After getting a doctorate in business from American University in 1966, he left the city for Silver Spring and started a company in his home: CDA Investment Technologies. Using the limited computer power available then, CDA analyzed and reported on the performances of securities, money managers and institutional portfolios.

Business boomed. By 1986, when he sold the company to a Dutch publishing giant, CDA had offices in Rockville, New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Tokyo and London. The terms of the deal weren't disclosed, but Levy said he got plenty.

"Selling it allowed me to pursue whatever new opportunities I wanted to pursue without any financial pressures at all," he said. He decided to get a law degree and indulge his longtime interest in public policy. He had been contributing money to the Cato Institute for years, and in 1997, Cato hired him as a fellow, giving him a pulpit from which to espouse his views on limited government and the sanctity of personal freedoms.

The Second Amendment is just one of his areas of interest, and not the biggest one, Levy said. The right of the people to keep and bear arms isn't a right he ever needed to exercise.

"Even when I lived up there, I didn't live in D.C.," he said. "I lived in Chevy Chase, in a high-rise that was secure. And before that in Potomac. Not exactly high-risk areas."

The Chevy Chase high-rise is in Montgomery County. Levy and his wife sold the condo two years ago for $2.6 million and moved to Naples. They spend summers in their million-dollar home in Lake Biltmore, N.C., a resort area in the southwest corner of the state.

He said he visits Washington about once a month, but he steers clear of the neighborhood where he grew up. "Today it's an area of drug sales, a lot of crime," he said.

"I mean, where my dad's store was, you don't want to walk around there at night anymore."