By Timothy Wheeler, MD
Washington, D.C., to its lasting disgrace, is the epicenter of the civil rights struggle of our time—the fight to exercise our right to keep and bear arms. At a meeting in the District of Columbia’s St. Augustine’s Catholic Church last month, newly elected D.C. mayor Muriel Bowser assured her audience:
From Photo by Darrow Montgomery
“You have a mayor who hates guns. If it was up to me, we wouldn’t have any handguns in the District of Columbia. I swear to protect the Constitution and what the courts say, but I will do it in the most restrictive way as possible.”
Does the mayor of Washington, D.C. have any idea that she has just declared herself an enemy of one of our enumerated civil rights? Which other items in the Bill of Rights does she consider disposable?
Would she go down the list of our rights in that great founding document, maybe something like this?
AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster
“You have a mayor who hates the right not to be sentenced to cruel and unusual punishment. If it was up to me, I would decree flogging and torture in the District of Columbia. I swear to protect the Constitution and what the courts say, but I will do it in the most restrictive way as possible.”
For too many elected and unelected officials, the Constitution is an afterthought, if they think of it at all. And too many consider the oath they take a promise they can break with no consequences. With this series we are trying to encourage Mayor Bowser to slow down and think through the implications of what she said in St. Augustine’s Church last month.
—Timothy Wheeler, MD is director of Doctors for Responsible Gun Ownership, a project of the Second Amendment Foundation.