Hatch abusing democracy in the capital

In mid-August, Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, introduced the D.C. Personal Protection Act, a bill… In mid-August, Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, introduced the D.C. Personal Protection Act, a bill to repeal the 27-year-old handgun ban in Washington, D.C. He aims to remove the local, self-determined ban by national means, and he’s doing so by circumventing the democratic process. The people affected by his bill cannot vote on it, because Washington, D.C. has no vote in Congress.

Washington, D.C.’s congressional representatives are euphemized into “delegates” and “shadows.” They can rattle up a storm, but are without the only true influence – the vote.

Almost every elected official in Washington, D.C. has objected to Hatch’s proposal. Congressional Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton (D), Mayor Anthony Williams (D), and City Council, a mix of R’s and D’s, have disapproved. “The District is being targeted on guns … because we are helpless without senators and the full panoply of legal rights to protect ourselves,” Norton said, according to a July 17 article in The Washington Post.

And because of its non-voting status, Washington, D.C.’s residents and representatives cannot effectively protest this unfair treatment, especially in light of the fact that Hatch’s action has precedents.

For instance, Congress must approve the city’s budget, and, a few years ago, it refused to allocate locally raised tax money to count the ballots of a local medical marijuana initiative. You read that right. Congress forbade the votes from even being counted. Had that happened in any other country, there would have been screams of disenfranchisement, election fraud and civil rights violations from the international community.

It comes as no surprise – at least to Washington, D.C. residents – that Congress proposed a bill that would negate, without their consent, a law they had passed.

Hatch’s bill reasons that Washington, D.C.’s handgun ban violates the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms. Unfortunately for him, the Supreme Court’s long-standing interpretation of that amendment doesn’t agree.

In 1939, the Court held, in United States v. Miller: “The Court cannot take judicial notice that a shotgun having a barrel less than 18 inches long has today any reasonable relation to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia and therefore cannot say that the Second Amendment guarantees to the citizen the right to keep and bear such a weapon.”

Handguns are not Second Amendment-protected guns. Size matters to the Court, and this ruling should matter to Hatch and Congress.

Already, two lawsuits challenging Washington, D.C.’s gun ban are underway, one brought by the National Rifle Association, the other by Bob Levy, of the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank. They disagree on how to challenge the law, but are addressing it in the proper arena: before a judge, where residents and non-residents have equal footing.

Perhaps Hatch truly believes that, in order to save a city, one must ignore its residents’ wishes. Perhaps he thinks that, once the ban is lifted, Washingtonians will be so busy cha-cha-ing in their armed streets that they can doublethink his means away.

But being deprived of basic rights is not easily shrugged off.

In attempting to protect Washington, D.C.’s Second Amendment rights, Hatch forgets the spirit that passed the Bill of Rights – to protect citizens from being governed unfairly – and governing without consent is the acme of unfairness. Hatch’s desired ends demean not only those affected, but also our deepest Constitutional convictions.

Achieving what he believes to be democratic, by undemocratic means, shows his disregard for the voiceless and his willingness to ignore the democratic process.