Marion Barry Mugged

I don't know how I missed this one. Marion Barry, former DC Mayor and now a City Councilman in our nation's capital, was robbed at gunpoint in his own home last week, and blogger D. C. Thornton has the details.

As columnist Cam Edwards points out, Barry's own city-wide ban on gun ownership may be partly to blame. (Emphasis added by Songbird.)

Thirty years ago, our nation’s capitol was in the midst of a crime wave. The city council responded by banning handguns and requiring shotguns and rifles to be kept unloaded, dismantled, and locked away. The law abiding residents of Washington, D.C. had been disarmed, and the criminals took notice. Violent crime dipped slightly in the two years following the ban, although the murder rate actually continued to climb. By 1979, however, the violent crime rate was back above 1976 levels, and it has remained so ever since.