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Written testimony of J. Bradley JansenSubmitted for the record to theCommittee on Public Safety and the Judiciary,Council of the District of Columbia1350 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.Washington, D.C. 20004Hearing on17-887 Firearms Control Temporary Amendment Act of 2008and the Inoperable Pistol Amendment Act of 2008September 18th, 2008
Center for Financial Privacy and Human Rights bjansen@financialprivacy.orgPO Box 2658
Washington, DC
20013-2658 Tel. 202-742-5949 ext. 101
Executive Summary
Guiding Principles for Council
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Defining constitutional terms: The city’s argument that the “right of thepeople” was a collective right not an individual one threatened the rest of ourrights under the Bill of Rights.
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The Supreme Court has held that the Bill of Rights guards the rights of all"people" here, citizens or not.
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The council must approach the gun control question as it would the rest of the enumerated rights such as the right to freedom of speech, assembly,association, etc.
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The city needs to make a clearer distinction of what is permissible in publicspace versus private space.
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Trans-Jurisdictional Concerns
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Principles of Good Government: set clearly identifiable and quantitativelymeasurable goals. Laws and regulations not meeting those goals must bereformed or repealed.
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There are aspects of the gun control measures that amount to corporatewelfare by discriminating against small and home businesses and rewardingan effective monopoly to a single registered DC gun dealer.
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The implementation of a registry of gun owners raises serious data privacyconcerns.
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Failure to act appropriately may jeopardize home rule for the District.
Center for Financial Privacy and Human Rights bjansen@financialprivacy.orgPO Box 2658
Washington, DC
20013-2658 Tel. 202-742-5949 ext. 101
Chairman Vincent C. Gray, Phil Mendelson, other members of the subcommittee,thank you for allowing me the opportunity to submit testimony on this importantquestion. My name is Brad Jansen, and I am a DC resident and the director of theCenter for Financial Privacy and Human Rights. CFPHR was founded in 2005 todefend privacy, civil liberties and market economics and is part of the Liberty andPrivacy Network, a Washington, DC-based 501(c)(3) organization.
Defining “Right of the People”
The Founding Fathers deliberated extensively on their word choice and the meaningof their words.
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The city’s argument that the “right of the people” was a collectiveright not an individual one threatened the rest of our rights under the Bill of Rights.The right of the people “peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government fora redress of grievances,”
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“to keep and bear arms,”
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and “to be secure in theirpersons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures,”
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are all individual rights. To redefine “the right of the people” as a collective rightwould have jeopardized all of our rights.The importance of the unanimous agreement among all of the justices on theSupreme Court that the “right of the people” is an individual right cannot beunderestimated. It behooves the council now to understand the implications of their arguments to justify their ends.The city has a poor record on the gun issue of understanding the rights of thepeople. By trying to limit gun rights, the city maintained a “collective rights” approach. That approach has been unequivocally rejected. A new approach inthinking on how to approach the law and regulations is necessary.
Right of the “People” Not Just Citizens
The right of the people does not just mean US citizens, but all people here areprotected. The council needs to re-evaluate all of the gun control laws andregulations that do not unconstitutionally disenfranchise non-citizens of the Districtof Columbia of their rights.The Supreme Court has held that the Bill of Rights guards the rights of all "people"here, citizens or not.
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Again, aiming to limit our rights based on variations of thecollective rights view threatens all of the rights of all of us. Non-US persons whowere physically present inthe U.S. deserved Constitutional due process protections.
Any gun control measure by the city that predicates compliance based oncitizenship similarly violates the rights of the people here and invites further costlylawsuits the city will lose. Therefore, It would behoove the city to simply respect
Center for Financial Privacy and Human Rights bjansen@financialprivacy.orgPO Box 2658
Washington, DC
20013-2658 Tel. 202-742-5949 ext. 101
1
Seehttp://www.law.ucla.edu/volokh/beararms/testimon.htm
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First Amendment
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Second Amendment
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Fourth Amendment
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See US v. Verdugo-Urquidez (1990).
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