At today's bloggers briefing at Heritage we heard how the Bush Administration's Department of Justice is siding with the District of Columbia as its 1976 gun ban law is challenged in the Supreme Court. We also got the scoop on Ustream.tv, a new web service that lets anyone quickly and easily broadcast streaming video online.

The DC Gun Ban
Alan Gura, the lawyer who is arguing the pro-Second Amendment side in the DC gun rights case currently before the Supreme Court and John Lott, author and scholar at the University of Maryland, joined us by phone to update us on what's up with the Justice Department filing a brief that effectively supports the District’s gun ban.

Here’s an except from Lott’s recent article in NRO that explains how the case is shaping up:

The Department of Justice argument can be boiled down pretty easily. Its lawyers claim that since the government bans machine guns, it should also be able to ban handguns. After all, they reason, people can still own rifles and shotguns for protection, even if they have to be stored locked up. The Justice Department even seems to accept that trigger locks are not really that much of a burden, and that the locks “can properly be interpreted” as not interfering with using guns for self-protection. Yet, even if gun locks do interfere with self-defense, DOJ believes the regulations should be allowed, as long as the District of Columbia government thinks it has a good reason.

Factually, there are many mistakes in the DOJ’s reasoning: As soon as a rifle or shotgun is unlocked, it becomes illegal in D.C., and there has never been a federal ban on machine guns. But these are relatively minor points. Nor does it really matter that the only academic research on the impact of trigger locks on crime finds that states that require guns be locked up and unloaded face a five-percent increase in murder and a 12 percent increase in rape. Criminals are more likely to attack people in their homes, and those attacks are more likely to be successful. Since the potential of armed victims deters criminals, storing a gun locked and unloaded actually encourages crime.

When asked to handicap the Court’s likely decision, Gura said:

I think we’ll win, we’re writing the brief right now, there’s a good chance that they’ll go along with us.

Ustream.tv
Brad Hunstable, one of Ustream's founders, walked us through the service and talked about the opportunities for political candidates and non-profits to get up and running with Ustream. David's already blogged about Ustream today, but here's more for ya.

While the service is free, Brad talked about their plan to sell advertising, and add a Pay-Per-View feature.

The Pay-Per-View functionality can be used for fundraisers, for example: to see the Chuck Norris and Mike Huckabee BBQ, you have to contribute to the campaign.

While there's advertising on the homepage, there's currently none on the interior pages, or embedded in the videos. Brad stated that he wasn't keen on using pre-roll or post-roll ads and that he'd like to go with in-video product mentions, where the video host would talk up an advertisers product.

Rob Bluey asked if Ustream had thought of streaming Congressional committee hearings.

Lots of committee meetings take place that are never recorded, and Liberal members are getting away with saying and doing nutty things in the hearings, and there's no sunlight in the process.

Brad said he'd look into it, noting:

The Mainstream Media can’t cover everything, and we’re trying to fill that gap.

Blogs for Life 2008
Next Tuesday the Family Research Council is hosting Blogs for Life and our weekly bloggers briefing at their DC headquarters. They've got a great line-up of speakers including Star Parker.

I'll be there live-blogging it for you loyal techRepublican readers. Should be fun.