According to the Washington Post, Congress may, for once, actually do its duty under the Constitution and rewrite the DC gun laws, removing the ban on semi-automatic handguns and rifles, and removing the ban on citizens’ purchasing firearms outside of DC.  But of course, DC officials object:

“You could drive a truck through this language,” said Peter Nickles, acting D.C. attorney general. He noted that the bill would bar the D.C. government from passing any laws that would “unduly burden” residents wanting to have or use firearms as long as they met federal requirements.

“I’m very concerned that, under that legislation, the gun-rights advocates could challenge almost any restriction we’ve placed on gun ownership,” Nickles said. Opponents said they feared that if the bill became law, people could carry loaded semiautomatic weapons or .50-caliber sniper rifles in the city.

Actually, one can legally carry semi-automatic weapons in Virginia, although there are magazine capacity restrictions in some municipalities:

§ 18.2-287.4. Carrying loaded firearms in public areas prohibited; penalty.

It shall be unlawful for any person to carry a loaded (a) semi-automatic center-fire rifle or pistol that expels single or multiple projectiles by action of an explosion of a combustible material and is equipped at the time of the offense with a magazine that will hold more than 20 rounds of ammunition or designed by the manufacturer to accommodate a silencer or equipped with a folding stock or (b) shotgun with a magazine that will hold more than seven rounds of the longest ammunition for which it is chambered on or about his person on any public street, road, alley, sidewalk, public right-of-way, or in any public park or any other place of whatever nature that is open to the public in the Cities of Alexandria, Chesapeake, Fairfax, Falls Church, Newport News, Norfolk, Richmond, or Virginia Beach or in the Counties of Arlington, Fairfax, Henrico, Loudoun, or Prince William.

So why do DC officials fear their own people?  Tyrants fear their own people.   Are the residents of DC inferior to the residents of Virginia?  Is it because DC is 56.5% Black?  Well, Richmond is 57.2% Black, but somehow Richmond’s violent crime rate is a lot lower, 2474 per 100,000 versus DC’s 8839 per 100,000.  The property crime rate is also lower in Richmond, 5613 per 100,000 versus 31,581 per 100,000 in DC.

So, considering that Richmond has a higher percentage of Blacks, but is much safer than DC, we can rule out race as the determining factor in DC’s crime rate.  Could it be the poverty rate?  No.  Richmond’s poverty rate stands at 21.4%, while DC’s averaged 18.1% between 2006 and 2007.

Could it be, perhaps, that vicious circle that DC’s crime rate is out of control because the people cannot protect themselves and their property from criminals, and the DC officials, thinking their people are inferior, as demonstrated by the crime rates, keep their people from protecting themselves, thus raising the crime rate?