DCist points me to The Examiner’s article on the very first person to legally register a firearm in post-Heller DC, Amy McVey.
Amy McVey didn’t seem like the typical D.C. gun owner, at least not to the reporters who stood outside the Metropolitan Police Department on Thursday, the first day handguns could be registered in the District after the city’s 32-year ban.
“They looked at me and thought, ‘She doesn’t fit the profile of someone coming in with a gun,’ so they left me alone and I walked right past them,” said McVey, who was the first and only person to register a handgun Thursday when she entered the station with her Ruger .357 Magnum in a blue plastic bag around 1 p.m.
Kinda embarrassing, isn’t it, Mainstream Media? Let’s try to break down those stereotypes, okay?
A Victory for Feminists Everywhere
Oh, I mean anti-feminists. If there’s one thing that I’ve learned from Jill at Feministe, it’s that a decision to take responsibility for your own safety is a decision to leave the feminist sisterhood. Yea, that makes no sense to me either.
After all, Olympic Gold Medalist Kim Rhode or Hero Jeanne Assam don’t exactly seem to be household names ether. Why aren’t they female role models?
Did she break the law?
Seeing as there’s no FFL holders willing to do firearms transfers in the city [1] and that there’s that antiquated law on the federal books [2] that prevents people from buying a handgun from out of state, many people in the comments over at DCist are wondering if she broke the law by bring a firearm in to the city. Is “wondering” the right word? How about outright hostile?
OldPosterKnownAsCranky: …She’s actually a very well-known NIMBY ANC Commissioner in Tenleytown, known for her opposition to just about everything that would bring Tenleytown out of the 1950s. Kinda funny that she’s an anal-retentive stickler for others following all the rules, yet she was breaking the law by having an unregistered gun at home.
IMGoph: you make a damn good point, and she should have the hypocrisy pointed out to her a couple times over. seems like a lot of the ANC folk in ward 3 would qualify for douchebag or douchebagette of the week in any given week.
Classy. Then there’s this:
OldPosterKnownAsCranky: You know, I just thought of something. Aren’t ANC commissioners sworn in? And don’t they take an oath to faithfully execute all laws of the D of C? By registering the illegal gun, McVey is acknowledging that she was in violation of DC law for years. So wasn’t she knowingly violating her oath of office?
Ah, if only violating your oath of office was a tarring-and-feathering offense. Then we could probably do 100% of our elected and appointed officials. If I had any say in it, we could start with Fenty and Cathy Lanier.
And heck, in the struggle for civil rights, I suppose we should have demanded that Rosa Parks sit in the back of the bus and we should denounce Joseph McNeil, Franklin McCain, David Richmond, and Ezell Blair Jr for sitting at that lunch counter.
The truth of the matter was reveled on Cam Edwards’ show [3] the other day. Amy said that she owned the gun legally while living outside the District, and she left it outside the city when she moved to Tenleytown. That might also explain the low turnout so far. I mean sure I’m sure that there are many people who are afraid of how goverment officials would misuse a list of legal gun owners (one Katrina-style gun grab is one too many), but to register a firearm now, without relying on the pledged (not codified as far as I know) amnesty, you’ve got to be part of a small subset of people who legally owned a firearm while living in another state, and then decided to move to the District while leaving your firearm behind. That can’t be many people.
The petition to repeal DC’s semi-automatic gun ban, and Amy decides to be an pro-RKBA activist.
I’ve actually sat on this post because I wasn’t sure that Amy wanted to be pointed out as the first new permit holder in DC. After all, she only used her first name on Cam’s show. I was tipped off on her identity by Say Uncle, who did the right thing and redacted her name from her post. I’m pretty sure she’s decided otherwise now because of this post on the OpenCarry.org discussion forum and this press release [PDF].
Please note: you must be a resident of DC, or own a business there to sign the pension.
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[1] That have a valid occupancy license, that is. The one FFL holder that is willing to do transfers for mere mortals lost his lease, and had to move. The DC counsel has so far failed to issue him a new license.
[2] Now that we have NICS, which is a nationwide background check, why is there still a requirement to buy your handgun in state or territory that you live in, something that isn’t true for any other consumer item?
[3] While I’d love to link to the Cam and Company show, Cam emailed me last night to let me know that the show is not yet in his archives.
