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Saving
us from the Constitution
by
Garry Reed
Scrambling
to rewrite their gun laws after the US Supreme Court affirmed the right of
individuals to bear arms (DC v. Heller), the District of Columbia Council
voted to end the most restrictive antigun laws in the nation and replace
them with new restrictions.
The
new legislation, according to an Associated Press report, is designed to
follow the letter rather than the spirit of the ruling: handguns will be
permitted but can only be used in the home for self-defense. They cannot
fire more than 12 rounds without reloading, which the city of Washington
DC oddly defines as "machine guns." Effective self-defense is
further sabotaged by rules requiring that all guns be unloaded,
disassembled, or equipped with trigger locks.
Of
course, exceptions have been made for police, FBI, US Marshals, Secret
Service agents, the myriad other legal gun-toting bureaucrats such as
Federal Egg Inspectors, and vicious criminals who never obey laws anyway.
(No
mention is made whether the over-twelve-bullet ban applies to the six-guns
used by matinee cowboys such as Roy Rogers, Gene Autry and Hopalong
Cassidy in their heyday. As every child of that era knew, their
six-shooters could fire up to 27 times without reloading.)
However,
muckraking investigative reporter Max Prober of BlabberCast News has been
covering the Council closely. It seems that the councilcrats are
determined to apply the same approach to other Constitutional rights that
threaten the safety of District citizens.
In
new legislation, free speech will be allowed in the District, but only if
such verbal communication is used for self-defense in the home and
consists of fewer than 12 words per sentence.
For
example, if masked gunmen break in the front door, the homeowner may
legally use a twelve-word defensive response such as, "Don't shoot
me! You can take my stereo! I don't have a..."
Rapid-fire
speech that delivers up to 12 words without pausing for breath, as heard
on television infomercials when selling potato peelers and electric nose
hair trimmers, will be banned as "machine gun delivery."
Freedom
of the press, while acknowledged as a Constitutional right, will
henceforth be handled in a similar manner. All reading material in excess
of 12 words, including newspapers, magazines, libertarian polemics,
operating instructions for electric nose hair trimmers and brochures
explaining self examination techniques for colorectal cancer must be
unstapled, have cover locks like teenage diaries or be kept in the bottom
of locked birdcages.
Post-it
notes and "Hello My Name Is" tags will be exempt from the new
law.
Applying
the same rules to freedom of religion is a bit trickier. The Ten
Commandments and the Twelve Days of Christmas will obviously be legal, but
prayer books and hymnals may have no more than 12 entries. The books of
the Bible must be pared down to 12 or fewer to be legal. That means the
Old Testament of the King James Version will
end with 2 Kings while the New Testament will terminate at Colossians.
This
will eliminate Revelation. While Christians will miss The Rapture, Bible
control advocates point out that worshippers will be spared the fear of
Apocalypse. Protecting people, after all, is the whole point of both gun
control and canon control.
However,
Bibles may be kept in the home
for strictly self-defense purposes (if masked gunmen break in the front
door the homeowner may legally pray out loud, "God help me! You can
take my stereo! I don't have a..."
Otherwise,
they must have no loaded words, always be dissembling or secured with a
bible belt.
Upon
entering paradise, Muslim suicide bombers will be allowed no more than 12
virgins (as opposed to the promised 72) and Hindu scripture praising the
one thousand names of God will constitute a capital felony.
Former
gun-banners and fellow "living document" Constitutionalists hail
the attempts by the DC Council to circumvent the Constitution as
forward-looking, insightful and progressive.
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