Heller v. District Of Columbia, Round Two

Just over a month after the United States Supreme Court struck down the District of Columbia’s handgun ban, the man who brought that case is suing the District again over it’s response to the Supreme Court’s ruling:

The man who successfully challenged the D.C. handgun ban before the U.S. Supreme Court filed a second federal lawsuit yesterday, alleging that the District’s new gun-registration system is burdensome and continues to unlawfully outlaw most semiautomatic pistols.

Dick A. Heller, a 66-year-old security guard who lives on Capitol Hill, and two other plaintiffs allege in the lawsuit that the D.C. government violated the letter and the spirit of the landmark Supreme Court decision, issued June 26, that struck down the District’s decades-old handgun ban.

The 5 to 4 ruling concluded that the Second Amendment grants individuals the right to possess guns for self-defense but said governments may impose reasonable restrictions. The lawsuit filed yesterday in U.S District Court says the District’s restrictions go too far.

The suit urges U.S. District Judge Richard M. Urbina to toss most of the District’s new requirements, which include ballistics tests of registered handguns. It also asks him to eliminate restrictions on semiautomatic handguns and to order D.C. police to approve the handgun applications of the three plaintiffs.

To call the District’s “response” to the Supreme Court ruling cynical would be putting it nicely, so it’s nice to see Heller and the others moving quickly to bring this issue before the Courts. Something tells me, though, that Dick Heller may have another date with the Supremes in two or three years.