Used and vintage dealers in Adams-Morgan and other in-town Washington, D.C. neighborhoods are aghast at city regulations that would require secondhand dealers “to submit to MPD’s [the Metropolitan Police Department’s] pawn unit a detailed list of goods acquired each time they make a purchase. Additionally, MPD wants the stores to hold items for 15 days for police inspection before they can be sold.” Whether or not such regulations make sense as applied to traditional pawnshops, dealers in vintage apparel, records and books say it would make their business uneconomic or drive them to the suburbs. [Prince of Petworth, DCist]
Update: Via Twitter, the D.C. government says after talking with business owners it is proposing to exempt book, record and apparel resellers from having to get a secondhand goods license; they would need only a general business license. It also says the regulations to the contrary are not new but have simply gone unenforced before now (via Alexander Cohen, Business Rights Center).
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