Virginia Gun Owners Forum - VGOF

Yesterday afternoon, Emily Miller walked out of the Metropolitan Police Department's headquarters the proud owner of a new, legally registered Sig Sauer 9mm handgun. She may have seemed like just another one of the 2,000 or so District residents that have registered handguns since the Supreme Court ruled in 2008 that the city's longstanding handgun ban was unconstitutional, but Miller used her journey through the registration process to pen a widely read series of articles in The Washington Times and become an advocate for simpler gun registration rules in the District.

The Baltimore native, Georgetown grad, former Bush administration appointee and longtime resident said she had never much thought about owning a gun until late last year, when an incident at a friend's house convinced her that she'd feel safer as a legal gun owner. And while it's no longer illegal to own a handgun in the District, Miller found out that doing so requires navigating 17 steps outlined in a 22-page booklet of instructions and forms.

In the process, she sought out the only gun dealer in the District, a man who briefly went out of business last year, leaving District residents with no means to purchase a gun and city officials scrambling to find him an office. (He now works out of MPD headquarters.) She took a required safety class, which involved calling all 47 of the trainers recommended by MPD. She purchased a gun in Virginia, and had it transferred in to the District. All told, she spent four months digging her way through the gun registration bureaucracy, took three days off of work to complete various steps and shelled out close to $500 in fees, on top of the $781 her gun cost.

There was also the untold frustration, which is harder to quantify. "It's my gun, it's my purchase and it's my right, and it felt so invasive of the government the way it is now. Anything that can be done that can get rid of some of these rules I'm in favor of," Miller told us yesterday, her voice rising in a steady crescendo as her disbelief with the process became more and more apparent.

Read More: http://dcist.com/2012/02/guns.php

At what point does frustration and exposure lead to actual change?

Ok... Now what?

OakRidgeStars wrote:Ok... Now what?

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Let's just hope she doesn't shoot herself in the foot.

The frustrating part is even though she has her Sig now. She has to keep it locked up and disassembled while at home. And really the only time she is legally allowed to remove it, is if she is going to the range.

totes6 wrote:The frustrating part is even though she has her Sig now. She has to keep it locked up and disassembled while at home. And really the only time she is legally allowed to remove it, is if she is going to the range.

This is why I don't live in DC. I'm rarely at home; the thing is fairly useless to me if it's locked in a box at my house.

totes6 wrote:She has to keep it locked up and disassembled while at home.

Considering the SCOTUS explicitly said this was unconstitutional in Heller, the guys making up the rules in the District must have some serious balls.

No just big mouths and wallets. (Message)!

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DC is one seriously jacked-up city. It is pitiful that it is the nation's capital.

clayinva wrote:DC is one seriously jacked-up city. It is pitiful that it is the nation's capital.

Pitiful or symbolic of the corruption we've let fester there for generations?