(nationalgunrights)  Recently, Washington Post reporter Christian Davenport tried to get a handgun permit from the District of Columbia.  Mr. Davenport’s lengthy article outlines just how little the vaunted Heller decision really did for residents of the District of Columbia.

While the handgun ban was overturned by the Supreme Court, the scope of the decision was extremely narrow.  That lack depth has allowed D.C. to create enough bureaucratic hurdles to make it as difficult as possible to get a handgun permit.

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.

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