The total gun ban which has made Washington D.C. safe for the past 30 years has been overturned by the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Apparently a couple of the justices finally bothered to read the Second Amendment to figure out what "the right of the people to keep and bear arms" means.

The court ruled that "the bar on carrying a pistol within the home, amounts to a complete prohibition on the lawful use of handguns for self-defense. As such, we hold it unconstitutional."

The decision offers some leniency for restrictions on gun ownership, noting that "this is not to suggest that the government is absolutely barred from regulating the use and ownership of pistols. The protections of the Second Amendment are subject to the same sort of reasonable restrictions that have been recognized as limiting, for instance, the First Amendment."

The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Ownership was swift to condemn the ruling, calling it "judicial activism" and thwarting the "will of the people".

"By disregarding nearly seventy years of U.S. Supreme Court precedent, two Federal judges have negated the democratically-expressed will of the people of the District of Columbia and deprived this community of a gun law it enacted thirty years ago and still strongly supports," [Paul] Helmke said.

Of course slavery and racial segregation were also "the will of the people".