http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20060802-010058-9030r_page2.htm
'Social experiment'
 John McCaslin
Consider these eye-opening FBI and Metropolitan Police Department statistics: Since 1976, when the District of Columbia imposed its ban on guns, the city's murder rate, which had been declining, started to increase; between 1976 and 1991 it rose 200 percent, while the U.S. murder rate rose just 9 percent.
    "The legislation is long overdue," said the National Rifle Association, referring this week to the "District of Columbia Personal Protection Act," introduced in each house by Rep. Mark Souder, Indiana Republican, and Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, Texas Republican.
    If passed, the legislation in each House would restore the 14th Amendment's guarantee of "equal protection of the laws" by ending the city's unique prohibition on allowing guns for self-defense in one's home, while retaining stiff penalties for illegal gun possession and gun crimes.
    As far as the NRA is concerned, the 1976 vote by the D.C. Council was "a social experiment of its own design against the city's law-abiding residents," not to mention a "thumbing its nose" at Congress and the rest of the United States.