Opinion ID: 2377250
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 8

Heading: Purpose of the Firearms Control Act Immunity Provision

Text: The City Council's primary purpose in enacting the Firearms Control Act of 1975 was to reduce the potentiality for gun-related crimes and gun-related deaths occurring in the District of Columbia. [3] The prosecution of Mr. Steinwho was fully qualified to carry his weapons elsewhere, and was in the District for a very limited time and purposefor failing to properly assess the distinction between a Capitol police officer and a Metropolitan police officer seems to me an unjust result (and, I might add, a waste of the government's resources). The hypertechnical statutory interpretation supported by the majority does nothing to promote the purposes of the statute. The public policy behind § 6-2375 is obviously to encourage individuals to surrender firearms to responsible police authorities so that those firearms will not be used in the District of Columbia. Nothing which Stein did would undermine that purpose. In fact, prosecuting Stein for choosing the wrong police officer to surrender his weapons to only works to discourage other citizens from being so forthcoming in the future.