D.C. Residents Turned Away at Gun Shops

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LAST WEEK, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the District's ban on handguns is unconstitutional. So D.C. residents in the market for a firearm shouldn't have much trouble, right?

Wrong.

As The Post's Allison Klein reports, gun shops in the Maryland and Virginia suburbs are telling potential buyers to hold their horses. The reason: D.C. hasn't developed rules on gun purchases, such as which types of guns are legal and how they should be registered. Officials say that process would take about three weeks, Klein reports.

"We're telling everyone to wait 30 days," said Dale Metta, manager of Atlantic Guns in Silver Spring told The Post. "We can't do anything until the D.C. government says, 'These are the rules.'"

And will gun stores be allowed inside the District lines? That's a question that The Post's Marc Fisher put to Mayor Adrian Fenty ("It's hard to say," he said) and expands on further in a post today in his Raw Fisher blog.

» "Gun Shops Await New D.C. Rules" [WaPo]
» "The Next D.C. Gun Battle" [Raw Fisher/WaPo]