IN MY SHOES: Why I Am Fighting The D.C. Gun Ban
With attorneys representing Washington, D.C. filing a petition to have the full Court of Appeals rehear a case in which several citizens successfully challenged the district’s 31-year ban on handguns last month, The Washington Post tells the story of Shelly Parker – she of Shelly Parker et al v. District of Columbia (No. 04-7041) fame - who “did everything she could” to keep her home in the 200 block of 14th Place NE safe:
She owned a dog. She called D.C. police when she suspected illegal activity on her block. She installed a security camera on her front window.
Her crime-fighting efforts made an impression. One night, Parker found her car window smashed and saw rocks scattered around the vehicle. She felt it was retaliation for her vigilance.
"That really disturbed me to my core," recalled Parker, who said she often received verbal taunts while walking her malamute, Barney, near her home on the northeastern edge of Capitol Hill.
A police officer gave her some advice, Parker said.
Get a gun, he told her. …
Robert A. Levy, the lawyer who bankrolled the lawsuit, wanted a diverse group of complainants, and Parker, a 44-year-old software designer, is one of two black female plaintiffs. She said the ban on handguns puts neighborhood activists at risk of being subjected to threats and harassment. Having a pistol in her home would level the playing field, she said. …
When she first considered buying the yellow house … she was charmed by the narrow, one-way street with its clumped rowhouses that almost border the sidewalk. …
Then spring came, and her "cute, quaint street" took on an entirely different character.
In the warm weather, a group of men loitered on the block, drinking beer, smoking marijuana and attracting a lot of traffic that Parker suspected was related to drug sales.
Sometimes they hung out on various front stoops, including her own. Parker noticed that the cars stopped for one young man in particular, who she learned had grown up on the block and whose mother still lived there. …
Parker started calling the police and took to the streets in orange-hat citizen patrols. …
[R]elations had grown particularly tense with the young man Parker considered the magnet for trouble on her block. One night, Parker said, he shook her iron gate and shouted, "[Expletive], I'll kill you. I live on this block, too."
He was charged with felony threat but was acquitted.
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