Clueless white man instructed by wise Negro kwap

Get a Gun in D.C. -- Do You Feel Lucky?
Not Just Strict Rules Test Your Decision

By Christian Davenport
Washington Post Staff Writer

It took $833.69, a total of 15 hours 50 minutes, four trips to the Metropolitan Police Department, two background checks, a set of fingerprints, a five-hour class and a 20-question multiple-choice exam.

Oh, and the votes of five Supreme Court justices. They're the ones who really made it possible for me, as a District resident, to own a handgun, a constitutional right as heavily debated and rigorously parsed as the freedoms of speech and religion.

Just more than a year ago, by a 5-to-4 decision, the court struck down the District's three-decades-old outright ban on handguns -- the most restrictive gun law in the country. In District of Columbia v. Heller, Justice Antonin Scalia, writing for the court, said the Second Amendment guarantees the right of an individual to bear arms, not just Americans in a "well regulated Militia"; the District's prohibition was therefore unconstitutional.

Reluctantly, Mayor Adrian M. Fenty's administration set up a process through which about 550 residents -- now including yours truly -- have acquired a handgun. But as my four trips to the police department attest, D.C. officials haven't made it easy.

Which was exactly their intent. The day the Heller decision was announced, Council Chairman Vincent C. Gray (D) vowed that the city was still "going to have the strictest handgun laws the Constitution allows." Fenty decried the ruling, saying that "more handguns in the District of Columbia will only lead to more handgun violence."

Under threat of additional litigation, however, the city has already had to ease some of its initial restrictions by greatly expanding the range of gun models, including semiautomatic handguns, residents are allowed to own.

For now, the D.C. regulations are still in place. That meant that on my journey to gun ownership, I had to prove proficiency with a weapon on the range and in the classroom. I had to allow the District government to fire my gun before I did so its ballistics could be recorded. I had to vow that I was mentally sound and not under indictment.

In the end, I got my gun. But I keep it locked in a box in my dresser. Because despite the fact that my government trusts me to own a gun, I'm not sure how I feel about having a weapon that can send a piece of metal the size of a thimble hurtling through space with such speed that it could make someone's head explode.

....

The course I choose costs $250 (group lessons are cheaper), and is taught in Temple Hills by Isaiah Abraham , a behemoth of a man who also works as a Department of Defense police sergeant assigned to the Naval Observatory.

We go over the parts of the gun so I can identify the difference between the hammer and the firing pin. Soon I'm learning to load a .38-caliber revolver with dummy bullets.

From the moment I wrap my fingers around the grip, the gun feels uncomfortable, unwieldy and so surprisingly heavy that my entire arm dips a bit as Abraham hands it to me. A toy it is not. As I adjust my grip, the muzzle dances wildly around, pointing its deadly black eye all over the room.

Disapprovingly, he takes the gun to show me how to hold it properly, and in his experienced hands the weapon is immediately obedient. Then again, guns have long been a part of his life. Growing up in Southeast Washington, he saw one of his friends get shot in the head "for candy money" when he was in middle school. As an adult, he worked as a security guard in the projects, and later, as a D.C. cop, he patrolled some of the toughest neighborhoods when crack cocaine was driving up the homicide rate.

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