DC Gun Ban Action and a Warning from the DC Circuit

Interesting, courtesy of John Lott:

"Yesterday the DC Circuit granted DC's unopposed motion to stay the mandate in the Parker case until August 7, the deadline for a cert petition. In an extraordinary statement (see attached), Judge Silberman warned DC that it would have been inappropriate to request a stay if DC did not intend to file for cert."

In other words, Silberman suspects that DC is just playing games with the Court to avoid changing its gun-ban ordinance per the recent decision.

A suspicion which appears to have grounds:

There are rumors floating around DC that DC and the gun control groups getting cold feet and believe that they will lose if they go to the Supreme Court. A couple of different people told me about this last night at the annual CEI dinner. My own guess is that if DC doesn't appeal after making so much noise about doing just that, gun control groups will suffer a serious black eye and will be taunted with that decision for years. For them not to go forward, they must be really worried about suffering a very serious loss at the Supreme Court.

Later in Lott's post, the Mayor of DC acknowledges that a loss at SCOTUS would have serious effects in Chicago, Boston, and NYC--but the Mayor intends to 'do what is right for DC citizens.'

Well, Your Honor, "what is right" would be to abrogate your stupid ordinance.

But don't let that bother you; fight on!!!

Heh.