Attention Supreme Court

While we wrestle with the legal locutions of your 300-page District of Columbia v. Heller opinions, please consider possible unintended consequences of your actions, as suggested by the late Arthur Capper, five-term Republican senator from Kansas and twice that state’s governor:

It is apparent that Congress intended to change the political status of the District in some degree from the beginning…. If anything ever was worth fighting for it is national representation for the District of Columbia. . . . .  In my State, if its 2,000,000 inhabitants were told that they could have no voice in the Government which they are taxed to support, I know what would quickly happen. An army would be organized, and it would march across the plains to the Capital of the country and enforce its rights. Of course, I do not recommend for you an appeal to arms. But you must all be aggressive to secure for yourselves that which is rightfully yours.

U.S. Senator Arthur Capper, in a 1938 speech to the Columbia Historical Society (emphasis added).

You write of militia. When will we get ours back?  I refer to the DC National Guard and Air Guard, and I don’t mean back from Iraq, where our neighbors serve and die. When will our militia have local jurisdiction?

Unless called up by the President to defend the country, other Guard units assist their neighbors in times of crisis under direction of their state’s chief executive. By law, ours cannot. DC Guard units are permanently federalized. You are so concerned with giving us guns; give us our militia.

Image by Mike Licht and the Australian Imperial Forces. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license. Credit: Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com. Yes, I’ve used this before.