Washington, D.C.’s only federally licensed gun dealer Charles Sykes is no longer accepting firearms for transfers, meaning residents can’t legally buy new handguns in D.C., he told the Daily Caller Thursday. [More]That's one way to do it.
I forget how this situation arose-- is he just the only one because no one else wanted to get in the business, or is there some kind of ordinance naming him the official dispenser of rights?
In any case, it'll be a relief to see headlines like this go away for a while.
What?
[Via Jim Simpson for Congress]
As best I recall, he's the only one the police will license under DC Code § 7–2504.01.
ReplyDeleteIIRC there was another FFL in DC. Josh Sugarmann of the Violence Policy Center.
ReplyDeleteI'm pretty sure he's not selling any guns either ;-)
Our pal Emily explains at https://www.washingtontimes.com/blog/guns/2011/oct/11/miller-dcs-only-gun-source/ :
ReplyDelete"Last May, Mr. Sykes lost his lease when his office building was sold. The city then took advantage of a stray word in the law to classify his business as a “firearms retail sales establishment,” which made it almost impossible for him to relocate. The designation meant he couldn’t be within a football field’s distance from a school, church, apartment, house or library. In this tightly packed city, that left no reasonably priced options.. Thanks to a pending lawsuit, however, city officials realized the court could rule against them for wholly denying residents the ability to buy a gun within the law. When Mr. Sykes proposed the idea of leasing government space, they relented and agreed to a spot downstairs from the police headquarters.”
My bet is that that was the very last idle janitor’s closet available in the entire city. There was only one at hand, to foreclose a federal lawsuit, and no more.
Just the usual Democrat Jim Crow show.