DC Won’t Enter FFL Business. For Now.

Washington, DC had been thinking about getting into the firearms business. Only now they’re not. And the district’s de facto gun ban rolls on. Which, again, is just the way the city government likes it. The DC councilman who had proposed that the city provide FFL services pulled the bill from consideration. His reason? The mayor is helping the city’s only licensed FFL (the one who lost his lease in April) find a new location for his business. Like that’s going to happen soon…

Charles Sykes, the FFL interruptus, has been looking for a new location since April. He’s “submitted several potential addresses to zoning authorities over the last few months, but all had been rejected. D.C. zoning laws enacted in 2009 require gun shops to be in commercial districts and 300 feet from schools, libraries and other landmarks.”

Which prompted Alan Gura (who won the Heller case) to file suit against the city. DC councilman Phil Mendelson, wanting to render the suit moot, had the bright idea that the city should provide the service. Because when you think of service in DC, you think of city government.

But Mendelson’s been told Mayor Vincent Gray’s on the case.

Gray said he was making “extraordinary efforts” to assist Sykes in finding a new business location. That may include allowing him to set up shop in a government office building, a Gray spokesman said.

Which conjures visions of the mayor furiously running around town, trying to find one location that’s actually permissible, zoning-wise. If there is one.

In the mean time, city residents still can’t legally transfer handguns bought elsewhere – no gun dealers in the DC, of course – into Washington. Not without the city being forced to accommodate it by a federal court, it seems.