5/99 Repeal the D.C. Mandatory Victim Law

Repeal the D.C. Mandatory Victim Law
Vote “YES” on the GOODE Amendment
(June 17, 1999)
Gun Owners of America
8001 Forbes Place, Suite 102, Springfield, VA 22151
Phone: 703-321-8585 / FAX: 703-321-8408

Since 1976, most citizens of the District of Columbia have been made mandatory victims by government mandate. It’s past time to level the playing field and allow the District’s citizens to possess firearms.

The D.C. gun ban experiment has been a miserable failure. No one would argue that criminals have been unable to get their hands on guns since the ban passed. It is only the decent citizens of the city who have been disarmed.

The Goode amendment will repeal the misguided and ineffective gun ban in the nation’s capital. This measure will put the criminal on notice that the streets of Washington will no longer be ‘criminal safe zones.’

Some claim that criminals merely get their guns in Virginia where the laws are more relaxed. This, they argue, is why the D.C. gun ban is not working.

Perhaps criminals do get their guns in Virginia, but this overlooks one point: If the availability of guns in Virginia is the root of D.C.’s problems, why does Virginia not have the same murder and crime rate as the District? Virginia is awash in guns and yet the murder rate is much, much lower. This holds true even for Virginia’s urban areas.

If you support a complete ban on handguns, then vote against the Goode amendment. If you think the citizens of this city are less responsible with firearms and less deserving of the right to self-defense, then vote against the Goode amendment.

But if you support the Second Amendment rights of all law-abiding citizens and if you think that the people of this city have the right to protect themselves against violent crime, then please vote “YES” on the Goode Amendment.

Gun Owners of America will rate this vote.