I guess the Second Amendment of the Constitution is a little bit inconvenient for them, so they want it overruled.

Attorneys for the District sought yesterday to preserve the city's gun-control law, asking a federal appeals court to reconsider a recent decision that called some restrictions unconstitutional.

The District urged the full appeals court to review the ruling made last month by a three-judge panel. The 2 to 1 decision declared that the Second Amendment grants a person the right to possess firearms and struck down a part of the D.C. law that bars people from keeping handguns in homes.

Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D) vowed to fight the decision, and yesterday he was at the courthouse for the filing of a petition seeking a full review by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.

Flanked by Attorney General Linda Singer, Police Chief Cathy L. Lanier and council members Phil Mendelson (D-At Large) and Marion Barry (D-Ward , Fenty said the District cannot afford to accept a ruling that would increase the number of guns in the city.

"More guns quite simply leads to more violence," Fenty said.

In seeking another layer of review, the District argued that the case deals with "questions of exceptional importance" and noted that the decision creates conflicts in federal case law that must be resolved.

In a related development, Mayor Fenty and other city officials asked that the court also declare that the right of the people to peaceably assemble and the right of the people to be secure in their homes and their papers -- rights added to the Constitution at the same time as the right to keep and bear arms as a part of the so-called "Bill of Rights" -- apply only to government bodies and not to individual citizens, noting that applying such rights to individual citizens would do nothing besides protect criminals and rabble-rousers, leading to further disorder within the city.

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