Dick Heller challenges D.C.’s gun registration scheme, files for quick ruling in Heller II -- By Emily Miller, The Washington Times

The District of Columbia will do anything to stop law-abiding people from owning firearms to defend themselves.

The Supreme Court ruled in 2008 that D.C.’s 30-year handgun ban was unconstitutional in the landmark District of Columbia v. Heller decision. In response, Washington’s city council put in place the most onerous gun registration requirement in the country.

So Dick Heller is taking D.C. to court again in a case known as “Heller II.”

Heller told me in a phone interview Tuesday that, “The city collected every gun restriction they could find from every other state and gave them to us as thumbtacks on the road for our march to Second Amendment freedom.”

He is the lead plaintiff of five District residents who state that their constitutional rights are being infringed by the registration requirements. The city claims the process is necessary for “to protect police officers and to aid in crime control.”

On Tuesday evening, the plaintiffs’ attorneys, Stephen Halbrook and Dan Peterson filed a motion in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia asking Judge James Boasberg for summary judgment. The also asked for denial of the city’s request for summary judgment last month.

The plaintiffs argue in the brief that, “These burdensome requirements appear calculated to discourage persons from registering firearms at all and, for those who do so, to snare them with expiration and re-registration deadlines that, if missed, would turn them into criminals.”



The re-registration requirement starts on Jan. 1. Every gun owners who has registered a gun since 1976 will have to go to police headquarters to be fingerprinted and photographed.

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