By Timothy Wheeler, MD
It is one of the great ironies of contemporary American politics that our nation’s capital is ground zero in 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 a couple of weeks ago, newly elected D.C. mayor Muriel Bowser assured her audience:
Muriel Bowser. (Cliff Owen/AP)
“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?
Muriel Bowser (Michael Williamson / The Washington Post via Getty Images)
“You have a mayor who hates the idea that a person’s home is her castle. If it was up to me, the police wouldn’t need a search warrant to enter your home 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.”
Will Mayor Bowser come to regret her thoughtless disrespect of the Constitution? Probably not. But we hope to remind our readers just how precious our civil liberties are, and how quickly some government officials can forget their oath of office.
—Timothy Wheeler, MD is director of Doctors for Responsible Gun Ownership, a project of the Second Amendment Foundation.