A lot of has changed for the better in the Nation’s Capital since Donald Trump returned to the White House. But the recent arrest of a young National Guardsman for an apparently harmless breach of D.C.’s constitutionally questionable gun control regime shows the District still retains its longstanding anti-gun streak. If D.C.’s own public officials cannot be trusted to administer the law with proportionality and common sense, higher authority should intervene.
According to an account from the Associated Press, on November 28, a 22-year-old off-duty specialist with the Oklahoma Guard deployed to Washington, D.C., as part of an ongoing safety task force was traveling in an SUV with another National Guard member when they were stopped by U.S. Park Police over an expired tag. Upon approaching the vehicle, the officer reportedly saw an empty holster inside. When the guardsman was asked if there was a firearm in the vehicle, he responded in the affirmative.
The AP story went on to explain,
One officer said the soldier told authorities he was temporarily living in D.C. as part of the National Guard operation and said Oklahoma was an open-carry state and that the firearm was registered to him there. He acknowledged he did not have a valid District of Columbia concealed-carry permit, the statement said, a point confirmed by a records check.
According to the complaint, [soldier] was charged with carrying a pistol without a license.
DC CODE § 22-4504 provides,
(a) No person shall carry within the District of Columbia either openly or concealed on or about their person, a pistol, without a license issued pursuant to District of Columbia law, or any deadly or dangerous weapon. Whoever violates this section shall be punished as provided in § 22-4515, except that:
(1) A person who violates this section by carrying a pistol, without a license issued pursuant to District of Columbia law, or any deadly or dangerous weapon, in a place other than the person's dwelling place, place of business, or on other land possessed by the person, shall be fined not more than the amount set forth in § 22-3571.01 or imprisoned for not more than 5 years, or both;
Aside from the potential prison time, that five-year potential prison sentence makes it so that a conviction under DC CODE § 22-4504(a)(1) triggers the federal firearm prohibition under 18 U.S.C. 922(g)(1). This means that a well-meaning person convicted under the District’s law loses his gun rights, presumptively for life.
That heeding the call to service brought this young patriot from pro-gun Oklahoma under the jurisdiction of D.C.’s infamously strict gun control laws is unfortunate enough. But the irony that he was part of a task force authorized to carry weapons in connection with their official duties within the District suggests the arrest is more a matter of provincialism than public safety. Publicly available information contains no suggestion that Noonan was acting in a dangerous or aggressive manner at the time of his arrest. To the contrary, it appears he willingly provided the information that led the officer to arrest him.
The federal enclave has long been hostile to well-meaning citizens seeking to exercise their Second Amendment rights.
From 1976 to 2008, the District of Columbia had a total ban on handguns. That ban was held unconstitutional in the landmark U.S. Supreme Court case District of Columbia v. Heller (2008) that affirmed the Second Amendment protects an individual right to keep and bear arms.
It took a second federal court ruling in 2014 to force D.C. to create a concealed carry permitting regime, with the District unlawfully reserving discretion to refuse licenses even to law-abiding applicants. Then in 2017, a third ruling, this time from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in Wrenn v. District of Columbia, finally forced the city to adopt a shall-issue carry permitting scheme.
Still, it’s easy for well-meaning citizens to run afoul of D.C.’s onerous gun laws.
The federal enclave does not recognize carry permits from any other jurisdiction. Moreover, D.C.’s onerous Concealed Carry License training requirements, application process, and short license validity period (two years) are well outside the American norm.
If all the facts are as reported and there isn’t further incriminating information that hasn’t been publicly disseminated, the potential injustice at hand is even more disproportionate given the protections of the Law Enforcement Officers Safety Act (LEOSA).
LEOSA preempts jurisdictions’ carry restrictions to ensure that qualifying law enforcement officers are allowed to carry firearms throughout the country. Much like law enforcement officers, the National Guardsmen deployed to D.C. are there to serve a public safety function. Without defining the exact scope of LEOSA, the spirit of this important law is to help protect the rights of those who protect the public and allow them to carry the tools necessary to protect themselves and others.
In the long term, much more work needs to be done to bring the federal enclave’s gun laws in line with a proper understanding of the Second Amendment right. For the here and now, city and federal law enforcement and prosecutors would do well to focus on D.C.’s all-too-real violent crime problem rather than the Guardsmen deployed to assist them.
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