Change We Can Believe In
First, the cloud: The Senate passed S. 160, the blatantly unconstitutional bill purporting to create a Congressional district in D.C.
Now, the silver lining: Not before Sen. Ensign inserted the Second Amendment Enforcement Act into this otherwise worthless bill, which would repeal the District’s post-Heller ordinances of dubious constitutionality, and of non-dubious overall badness, relating to guns. It would also allow DC residents to buy guns in either Maryland or Virginia.
Now, the real silver lining: as amended, the bill contains a severability clause, making it virtually certain that the pro-gun amendments would survive any constitutional challenges the phony Congressional district almost certainly won’t.
By “almost certainly,” of course, I mean “almost certainly if the challenge makes it to the Supreme Court while all four conservatives and the one sometime conservative are still on the court. Even so, the odds of even the most liberal court striking down the repeal of DC’s gun laws on any basis are slim to none. So as loathsome as this sausage making process may have been, right now the sausage itself is looking to be mighty tasty.
H/t: Uncly-Wuncly and Flakey-Wakey.
March 1st, 2009 at 10:44 am
Do you really think that amendment has a snowball’s chance in Hell of surviving conference with the House?
March 5th, 2009 at 10:01 pm
I read somewhere that Pelosi has pulled the House version. So the real question is do you think they’re going to take a chance that it will survive conference? So another silver lining is that the amendment may have killed the so called “voting rights” part.