CHARLES HURT: In D.C., celebrating Christmas with a shooting spree

It is that special time of year when people all over America sing with cheer, exchange gifts with loved ones and count their many blessings.

But here in the federal city — this little cradle of liberty called Washington, D.C. — we celebrate a little differently. We go on a mad little gun spree shooting one another.

Over the past week, D.C. has seen 15 people shot in at least a dozen different incidents. More than half of them were killed.

All of this is actually really odd, considering that guns are outlawed here. The only way to legally obtain a gun is to take courses that are not offered and submit to background checks that are not made. Then you can purchase a gun from a licensed D.C. gun dealer that does not exist.

Then you have to go down to the police station to be fingerprinted like some kind of criminal. And then pray that in all the bureaucratic genius worthy of a police department that can’t get the right name of a man it fatally shot (really!), the city government doesn’t misfile your prints into the file of some kind of serial child rapist.

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