June 26, 2008 saw the United States Supreme Court make a ruling on an issue near and dear to my heart – gun ownership. For those who don't care or simply were unaffected by the ruling, the issue that was being discussed was “does an individual have a right to own a gun in America?”

Conventional wisdom say “Yes” and for nearly two hundred years, Americans have been able to possess firearms, despite increasing regulation and red tape to obtain and carry them. In Washington DC, this regulatory nightmare came to a head. In DC, it was legal to carry a registered firearm if you had a permit. The problem? DC doesn't allow people to register weapons and issues no permits. Now, I object to the ideas of permitting and registration in general, but in this specific issue the combination of permit requirements and non-issuance of permits essentially amounted to an all-out ban.

Dick Heller, a security guard, sued the District of Columbia over this and the lower courts ruled that the US Second Amendment (A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.) covered the “collective” “people” and not an individual. Since DC residents were “protected” by a military, the right was not being infringed. A higher court disagreed, saying individuals do have the right. The District of Columbia people didn't find this acceptable, so appealed the ruling to the highest court in the USA, the Supreme Court.

In short, the Supreme Court ruled in a 5-4 ruling that gun ownership is in fact, an individual right. For the liberty-oriented like myself, the 5-4 numbers are scary. Is “shall not be infringed” really that hard to understand that it splits the court nearly evenly?

Conservatives and miniarchists declared the Heller case a victory because “the government still defends our rights”. Myself and others considered it a loss, because in the ruling they said specifically "nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms. We also recognize another important limitation on the right to keep and carry arms."

In short, even though it's an individual right, the government people can still regulate it.

Now, all of the talk of the wording of the Constitution matters very little to me, I consider it a flawed document, built on a flawed premise. That said, a lot of people do cling to the thing as if it's a holy document and the government people have supposedly agreed to follow it's rules, so it's important in my mind to bring Constitutional issues to light to show “government” for what it is – a group of people doing business at the threat of violence.

The District of Columbia, rebuffed by the Supreme Court, has begun a gun registration program and granted amnesty for 180 days to encourage people to register their firearms now. One man, Dick Heller tried to do so this morning. Yes, this is the same Dick Heller who initiated the lawsuit and won. Now that the Supreme Court has overturned the DC ban, he stood waiting for the 7 am registration to open to register his .45-caliber semiautomatic pistol and a .22-caliber revolver, pretty standard fare firearms.

Mr. Heller was turned away.

An unnamed DC spokes-bureaucrat says that “the gun was a bottom-loading weapon, and according to their interpretation, all bottom-loading guns are outlawed because they are grouped with machine guns.”

In a now-famous internet quip.... WTF!

The importance of this distinction is huge. With the exception of revolvers just about every handgun ever produced is a bottom loader. I'm no gun guru but I can't think of a single one that's NOT a bottom loader.

Much in the same way as the DC government people passed laws effectively banning handgun ownership by not issuing licenses, they are still, even after losing in the highest court in the nation, using deceitful methods to skirt around the issue, to comply without really complying.

Let this be proof to everyone who called the Heller decision a "win" that individual right to gun ownership has not, indeed, been protected. Dick Heller, the man who sued and won, is still not able to legally have his firearm.

Let this show the miniarchists out there: Even "winning" is a loss. The government people's actions are all directed towards control for one reason or another, and once they have control they do not give it up. It is the nature of government to expand and grow, not to shrink. Let this case show you, as cases over and over have shown, that you can not defeat government people oppressing you by turning to the government.

It was J.R.R Tolkien who says of his work, the Lord of the Rings, "You can make the Ring into an allegory of our own time, if you like: an allegory of the inevitable fate that waits for all attempts to defeat evil power by power".