What’s Happening with Washington D.C.’s Public Carry Laws?
On August 19, The Washington Post reported on an apparent major shift in gun law enforcement in Wahington, D.C., where prosecutorial decisions for local and municipal laws are set by the United States Attorney’s Office. Jeanine Pirro, U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, announced that her office will no longer charge individuals carrying registered long guns in public with violating D.C.’s broad prohibition on public carry. The announcement came, paradoxically, shortly after President Trump declared a “crime emergency” in D.C., exerted federal control over D.C.’s police department, and employed D.C. national guardsmen and ATF agents to patrol neighborhoods in the District.
While Pirro’s announcement referenced a memorandum memorializing the shift in gun law enforcement, that memo hasn’t been released. And there remains substantial uncertainty about what exactly is changing and how the change fits within the administration’s broader crime-prevention efforts in the nation’s capital. Here, I’ll attempt to tackle these questions and explain where the impacts of relaxed public-carry enforcement might be most salient.
First, how is Pirro proposing to alter enforcement of D.C.’s gun laws? The District has historically had among the strictest gun regulations in the country, including a de facto ban on possessing operable handguns within the home that was struck down in Heller. D.C. residents wishing to obtain a gun must, as a general matter, register the firearm and obtain a registration certificate. An individual is required to apply for a registration certificate immediately after buying a firearm or bringing one into D.C. A registration certificate entitles the holder to possess a firearm, but not to carry that gun in public. Open carry is flatly prohibited for both handguns and long guns. Until 2014, D.C. banned concealed carry of handguns entirely—but that ban was loosened in response to pre-Bruen court decisions and, ultimately, D.C. adopted a shall-issue licensing rule that allows individuals to obtain a concealed carry permit if they meet certain objective criteria. Long guns, such as shotguns and rifles, remain subject to a near-complete ban and generally cannot be carried in public under D.C. law with few exceptions.
The change, as announced by Pirro, involves instructing attorneys within the D.C. U.S. Attorney’s Office “not to seek felony charges against people who are carrying rifles or shotguns” in public. The shift relates only to long guns, not handguns. It apparently involves only long guns for which the owner has sought and obtained a valid registration certificate, as Pirro did not mention any changes to D.C.’s registration requirements and stated that her shift simply “preclude[s ] a separate charge of possession of a registered rifle or shotgun” being carried in a public space. Registered long guns, then, can be carried in public without the risk of arrest under the new policy. It’s worth noting that many long guns cannot be carried in a concealed manner due to their size, and thus the shift also seems to involve paring back D.C.’s general open-carry ban (at least as it relates to long guns).
Second, what is driving the change? As mentioned earlier, we have little specific information about the reasons for the shift; while a detailed memo apparently exists, that document has not been publicly released. In a statement to The Washington Post, Pirro said that
D.C.’s blanket prohibition on carrying shotguns or rifles “is clearly a violation of the Supreme Court’s holdings” in two landmark cases expanding the right to bear arms: District of Columbia v. Heller from 2008 and N.Y. State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen from 2022.
Thus, it appears the enforcement change was at least partly driven by constitutional concerns. Those concerns, however, don’t hold much weight given that the Supreme Court has—in past decades—only issued Second Amendment decisions in cases involving handguns. Heller and Bruen, in fact, went out of their way to emphasize that handguns are by far the preferred self-defense weapon in the country. The modern Court has never, by contrast, decided a case involving long guns—much less the public carry of long guns. And, as a general matter, social norms surrounding public carry have shifted such that, while it was once considered nefarious to carry guns secretly, concealed carry is today much more widely accepted than open carry.
One might argue that Bruen’s holding was broader and that the Court implicitly invalidated public-carry restrictions that are outliers, or that deviate from the national norm. In that respect, D.C.’s approach to long gun carry is potentially suspect. D.C. is one of only five jurisdictions, along with California, Connecticut, Florida, and Illinois, that generally prohibit the carrying of long guns in public. But it’s quite a leap to suggest that Bruen implicitly cast doubt on these laws, or on other approaches that permit public carry of long guns but impose permitting or similar requirements. And it is also unclear how the public carry of long guns furthers any self-defense interest protected by the Second Amendment; after all, concealed carry of handguns will likely be far more effective in that regard.
The constitutional rationale does not quite hold water. And it could well be that the shift was intended, instead, to appease gunowners and Second Amendment supporters who have been generally dissatisfied with the administration’s heavy-handed approach to fighting crime in D.C. in recent weeks. As reported by The Reload, a number of major gun-rights groups criticized Trump’s efforts to use federal officers in local D.C. crime prevention—specifically to the extent those operations were designed to seize illegally-possessed firearms or to enforce gun laws. Some gun-rights groups, including the National Association for Gun Rights, raised concerns that the federal crackdown would involve overzealous enforcement of D.C.’s strict firearm laws and thus harm law-abiding gunowners. It’s perhaps more likely, then, that Pirro’s announcement was a direct response to the backlash by gun-rights groups against Trump’s initial tactics meant to head off further criticism.
Third, what impact can we expect this change to have on the ground? The initial Post story notes that the D.C. statute generally banning public carry of long guns was used in recent high-profile shootings, including as a charge against the 2016 “Pizzagate” shooter. It’s a relatively easy charge to bring in such cases, because it simply requires proof that a gun was carried in public—something that can often be confirmed by video. (Similarly, Luigi Mangione was charged with one count of discharging a firearm equipped with a silencer.)
Even with carry charges off the table, prosecutors may still be able to achieve a similar outcome in such cases by charging the perpetrator with the common-law offense of “going armed to the terror of the people.” And that charge might be especially important in instances where the gunowner doesn’t actually carry out a planned attack and thus can’t be charged with more serious crimes. But affray and similar offenses are more difficult to prove than unpermitted carry, because they turn on a gun carrier’s intent and how the perpetrator’s actions were perceived.
Pirro’s announcement emphasized that, in her view, D.C. law enforcement retains numerous tools to address violent crime committed with firearms. For example, Pirro touted the number of crime guns recovered in the past year, alluded to efforts to crack down on “illegal” firearms (guns that are stolen or otherwise obtained unlawfully by prohibited possessors), and stressed that “[n]othing in this memo . . . precludes the United States Attorney’s Office from charging a felon with the possession of a firearm, which includes a rifle, shotgun, and attendant large capacity magazine.” Thus, it appears that certain firearm prosecutions remain a high priority for the D.C. U.S. Attorney’s Office, even after this shift.