Law mandates 24-hour waiting period for....Tattoos and Piercings?

Seriously.

What the hell is wrong with Washington, DC? I'm ashamed to admit I was born there. A left-controlled sewer that re-elected a crack addict as Mayor after he got out of prison. The capital city of the United States of America, and the sheep within its borders are content with Taxation Without Representation, having no voting say-so in Congress as they pay taxes to feed the government that oppresses them. Then again, one in four DC residents is on food stamps so it's also the government that feeds them, houses them, clothes them, and raises their illegitimate progeny.

This is a real plate. Not a PhotoShop parody.. Seriously. They EMBRACE it.

The District ranks 8th nation-wide for homicides among the nation's most populated cities. Of course, the other seven cities (except Oklahoma City) are Democrat strongholds too, cities that restrict the ability of law-abiding citizens to defend themselves by owning a firearm, while criminals run free killing those defenseless citizens left & right. If you want to keep up with murders in DC, or the mid-Atlantic as a whole, head on over to http://www.burgersub.org and read the updates. They also have Murder Maps that map out homicides using Google Maps, like this one that maps out DC murders from 2005 to 2009.

Murder Map for DC, 2005 to 2009. The red star denotes where I lived for my first 14 years.

Today there's been pandemonium at the Washington Navy Yard with multiple shootings, which of course will be labeled workplace violence instead of terrorism regardless of who did it, and this will focus attention on even more oppressive gun control legislation and away from Obamacare, which ruins your life in two weeks.

Yes, the District of Columbia is a 68.3 square mile cesspit of crime, corruption, deceit, and decay, a festering sore made bearable by historical monuments, museums, and a zoo.

All the problems in Washington, and what does the DC city government propose: yet another stupid law. This time, to make up for years of  no regulations on the tattoo industry in the District, they just came up with 65 pages of regulations that do more harm than good to the industry, chiefly the mandating of a 24-hour waiting period on tattoos and piercings.

Please, digest that a second. Try not to choke in apoplexy. I'll wait for you.

Yeah, like getting a tat is the same as needing a cooling off period on gun purchases....yes, some states literally make you wait a period of time between the purchase and allowing you to receive your purchase because they fear you, and think all gun buyers are in a deadly psychotic rage, and that by making you wait an arbitrary amount of time, your savage anger will subside and you won't begin a killing spree. In Illinois you gotta wait 24 hours on a long gun and 72 hours on a handgun, if they let you have it at all. In the Liberal Hell of Califiornia it's a mind-numbing TEN DAYS. Hawaii makes you wait FOURTEEN. In the DC Cesspit, it's ten days. At least they aren't wanting you to wait ten days for a tattoo...

While I have no problem with the part of the law that requires tattoo artists and piercers to have health tests and biohazard training, I do have a problem with a waiting period. This kills a HUGE segment of tattoo and piercing business from walk-ins. Of my 8 tattoos, my first 2 or 3 were walk-ins. I didn't have a set appointment and took my chances on how long of a wait it would be at the shop to get an artist freed up to ink me. I quickly began making appointments afterwards, but I digress. Not every tattoo artist or body piercer has their entire workday filled with appointments and thus they rely on walk-ins. Kinda like how a barber or beautician has to fill in the time between appointments with walk-ins. Can you imagine waiting 24 hours for a haircut after talking to the barber about getting a trim? For reals...

Yes, you should think long & hard about getting a tattoo or piercing. However, do that before you waste an artists' time in the shop hemming & hawing and deciding. Know what you want & where it's going. But even if you decide on the spur of the moment to get a tattoo of Boba Fett riding a rainbow unicorn and waving a laser gun, that's YOUR decision and not the fault of the artist. You're ostensibly a grown-assed adult making a grown-assed adult decision. The government should not be babysitting your decision-making skills on stuff like this.

NOTE TO GOVERNMENT: You are not my babysitter nor my parent. I am a grown-assed man, 44 years of age and can make my own decisions. I own firearms purchased without a waiting period (but with a background check) and those evil black guns have never killed anyone nor have I because guns don't kill people, people kill people. I have 8 tattoos and have had two earrings, none of which I waited for. On all of these purchases, be they guns or ammo or tats or piercings, I paid sales tax and the sellers paid license fees to sell me their goods/services. STOP MAKING IT IMPOSSIBLE TO CONDUCT COMMERCE IN AMERICA and STOP TRYING TO BE MY FRIKKIN' MOM.

Try solving your real-world problems with intelligent real-world solutions instead of engaging in bullshit. A city spokeswoman ,Najma Roberts, says: “We’re making sure when that decision is made that you’re in the right frame of mind, and you don’t wake up in the morning . . . saying, ‘Oh my God, what happened?’” That's not your call. You cannot hold peoples' hands from cradle to grave. This is why people stay on welfare their whole lives. You babysit them and coddle them. STOP IT.