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Bullet Points: The People Debate Fate Of Gun Ban
Gun proponent Sandra Seegars lives in Ward 8, a hot spot for gun violence.
(By Marvin Joseph -- The Washington Post)
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Not far from where Moore stood, Kathy Henderson, former ANC commissioner in Carver Terrace, told the council: "The level of violence in Carver Terrace is horrific. Where are our reassurances? My community is filled with citizens who are tired of listening to the helicopters hovering every night."
Outside the hearing, Henderson said that repealing the gun ban "would be a public safety nightmare. A public bloodletting. All the gun violence in the District is attributed to guns coming from Maryland and Virginia. We've had a 30-year ban on guns in the District. If law-abiding citizens are allowed to join the fray, it will be a bloodletting because tensions are already high."
In Carver Terrace, she said, "gunshots were as common during dinner hour as dinner. There is gunfire and helicopters, unwelcome daily punctuation to our lives and an unwelcome daily intrusion. Criminals have more sophisticated weaponry than the police, AK-47s. What does that say about civil society when citizens are armed? I think that is tragic."
The framers' words: "A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."
Outside the D.C. Council hearing, there is no argument over the placement of the commas and whether these commas "divide the Amendment into two clauses: the first is prefatory, and the second is operative," as the appeals court wrote.
Tony Allen, 28, a meat wrapper in a grocery store, grew up on Raleigh Place SE: "I think they should be for protection against people that break in people's houses, snooping around. I think they should have guns."
Ask him whether he knows anybody with a gun, and suddenly he is silent. The silence is a loud punctuation mark in the debate here.
Traveling in the city, you stop in Trinidad, a changing Northeast neighborhood, and remember the shots fired when the crack epidemic was hot here, the brother's scream from a porch the night he heard his brother was fatally shot, the crowd gathered around under the yellow lights and the brother's body lying in the street.
Two men sitting under the cool shade on a porch of a blond-brick house remember that time, too.
"I think they should legalize it," says John Baldwin, 31, who lives in the neighborhood.
"These young thunder cats can get it, why shouldn't we?" says Mark Evans, 29, a rehabilitation therapist sitting on the white railing.
"Because a lot of people are not safe in your own homes," Baldwin says. "You should be able to protect yourself. I'm not saying anybody should have a gun. Just the responsible people."
"The responsible people," echoes Evans. "You should be able to bear arms. I wouldn't say it would be safer. But it would make criminals think twice. They might get what they are trying to put out."
"Could it get any worse?" Baldwin asks.
"It's going to get worse before it gets better," Evans says.
