Mar 23, 2007  |  By: LOU CHIBBARO J  | COMMENTS     

A gay man who works for a libertarian advocacy group is one of six Washington residents who filed the lawsuit that prompted a federal appeals court last week to overturn a D.C. law prohibiting residents from keeping guns in their homes.

The 2-to-1 decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit outraged Mayor Adrian Fenty and alarmed city police officials who warned that allowing people to have handguns and rifles in their homes could worsen the city’s violent crime problem.

But to Tom Palmer, a gay libertarian activist and scholar, the decision would eliminate a law he considers unconstitutional and which he says prevents law-abiding citizens from protecting themselves in their own homes.

“Violent criminals are already armed,” Palmer said. “The mayor seemed to be surprised that the criminals don’t obey this law. It’s the law-abiding people who are disarmed by the law, not the lawless.”

The court allowed the city to continue to enforce the law while city officials appeal the ruling to the full appeals court and possibly to the U.S. Supreme Court. City attorneys said the decision did not affect other city gun control laws that prohibit the possession of firearms outside one’s home.

Local gay activists were quick to say the court ruling, if upheld, would have the same impact on gays and straights.

“I support the mayor’s position that this decision is harmful to the city as a whole,” said gay Democratic activist Peter Rosenstein, who worked as issues director on Fenty’s election campaign last year.

“But this should not be viewed as a GLBT issue because it’s not,” Rosenstein said.

Palmer has a doctoral degree in politics from England’s Oxford University. He lectures in the United States, Europe and the Middle East on the subject of individual rights and their historical foundations as senior fellow with the Washington-based Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank.

Palmer said the lofty principles of individual liberties did not enter his mind 25 years ago when he and a male companion were threatened by a group of 19 or 20 young men on a deserted street in San Jose, Calif.

“They shouted anti-gay epithets and they made death threats,” Palmer said. “We ran and they chased us.”

Seconds later, Palmer pulled out a 9 mm semi-automatic pistol he owned legally and pointed it at the youths, whom he was certain had planned to harm or kill him and his companion in a gay bashing incident.

“It stopped them in their tracks,” he said. “The leader of the group stared at the gun and said, ‘Do you have a permit for that?’ I said if they came any closer I would shoot. They backed off.”

No one was hurt in the incident, according to Palmer.

Palmer and his fellow litigants have been credited with filing a suit that prompted the federal appeals court to go further than all but one previous ruling in recent years in challenging the constitutionality of gun control laws throughout the country. The D.C. Circuit court declared that the Constitution’s Second Amendment grants individuals the right to possess firearms. Nearly all prior decisions have held that the Second Amendment is limited to state militias rather than individual citizens.

Sgt. Brett Parson, former commander of the Gay & Lesbian Liaison Unit of the city’s police department, said he could not recall any significant crimes targeting gays or transgender residents that involved a break-in or home invasion by a stranger.

Rosenstein said removing restrictions against possession of guns in the home could lead to an increase in domestic violence-related deaths by shootings if guns were readily available during a domestic dispute.

Two years ago, gay gun enthusiasts founded the Pink Pistols, a national group that promotes gun education and training in the gay community.