YES!

The supreme court has confirmed that the second amendement does indeed mean what it sais.

I'm not very fond of the second amendement per se, in the sense that'd support the right to keep and bear arms with or without it, same goes for the right to freedom of religion and free speech. But this does constitute a legal victory for my side that will benefit at least the citizens of DC.

Uncle's a very busy bee in writing up posts on the matter.

Me? I'm off to read the news with this playing in the background.

DC to introduce "neighbourhood safety zones"

And a rose by any other name means to say: cordoned off areas accessible only to those able to prove with ID that they belong there at checkpoints.
I guess we should be expecting metal detectors, drug dogs and the like to be present as well soon enough ...

Articles:
DCist.com
MSNBC

Don't like where this is going ...

We interrupt this program with a special bulletin:
The district of Columbia is now under martiall law.
All constitutional rights have been suspended.
Stay in your homes.
Do not attempt to contact love ones, insurance agent or attorneys.
Shut up.
Do not attempt to think or depression may occur.
Stay in your homes.
Curfew is at 7 PM sharp after work.
Anyone caught outside of gates of their suveillance sectors after curfew will be shot.
Remain calm, do not panic.
Your neighborhood watch officer will be by to collect urine examples in the morning.
Anyone caught interfering with the collection of urine examples will be shot.
Stay in your homes, remain calm.
The number one enemy of progress is question.
National security is more important than individual will.
All sport broadcasts will proceed as normal.
No more than two people may gather anywhere without permission.
Use only the drugs described by your boss or supervisor.
Shut up, be happy.
Obey all orders without question.
The comformental mandor is now mandatory.
Be happy.
At last everything is done for you.

Eight killed in DC

A spate of shootings has left eight dead and many more wounded in the gun control capital.

Clearly, strong gun control doe not mean criminals will not have and use guns.

The supposed effects of the DC gun ban.

One of the first things I did when starting this blog, was warn people about causal relationships.

This has come forward recently in a left rudder post, the author has posted a graph of the DC murder rate. (she sais that the Bureau of Justice Statistics has sourced these, but has failed to provide me with a link). The FBI's uniform crime report puts the count of murder and non-unintentional homicides at 195 and 198 for 2004 and 2005 for DC

She's replying to a deltoïd post, where the author has posted this link, but it doesn't seem to be working at the moment.

Anyway,
The issue at hand: can the DC murder rate (and by extension:crime rate) be caused by the current gun politics?
If it turns out that the murder rate went down, then I don't think so. See, the law bans most guns used for DC murder, so the street availability of guns did not decrease and so: it could not have been an important factor.

But like I said: It's currently very high, which can be a consequence of the reduced amount of people carrying concealed weapons. Of course it's just as impossible of establishing causal relationship here.
I'm currently going through the usdoj myself looking for a complete set of numbers, to get a better picture of the situation, Bureau of Justice Statistics is up next

You should too: always question statistics in the form they are presented to you!

Here's the graph I made from the figures found here:
http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/dccrime.htm
I really wish that site cited its sources, the last two numbers check out with the FBI, but I don't know if it's all correct.

If this is correct, you can see that the gun ban didn't have all that much effect on the murder count (note: this isn't the murder rate). The surge in violence takes place almost ten years later, which is hardly a reason to blame that specific event in gun law legislation.

The gun ban didn't save or destroy lives, all that it's been proven to have done, is cost the taxpayer money.