Navigating D.C. Gun Laws

With more than 1,000 tables, The Nation’s Gun Show in Chantilly, Virginia, is one of the country’s largest firearm sales events. It’s also relatively painless for law-abiding Virginians to take one home—they needn’t register their purchase with the state unless they buy a machine gun. Should they want to carry a handgun, they can apply for a permit from the circuit court of the county or city where they live.

Just across the Potomac, it’s a different story. The district, says criminal defense attorney Mark MacDougall of Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, is “widely considered to have some of the strictest gun regulations in the U.S.” 

The district’s stiff stance dates back to the Firearms Control Regulations Act of 1975, which banned D.C. residents from acquiring handguns and automatic and semiautomatic firearms. Owners who had previously registered guns were exempt, but they were required to keep firearms unloaded and at home. 

Things have loosened since. On June 2008, in District of Columbia v. Heller, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the ban on owning handguns in D.C.; they were, however, still restricted to the home. “If I saw someone getting assaulted in the street, I couldn’t take my gun outside or fire it into the air,” says criminal defense attorney Mark Schamel of Womble Carlyle.  “I would be breaking the law.”

More recently, in July 2014, the U.S. District Court for D.C. ruled in Palmer v. District of Columbia that the prohibition on carrying a handgun was unconstitutional, and despite talk of appeals, the Metropolitan Police Department began taking applications last fall. Spokesperson Gwendolyn Crump says that as of Jan. 30, 70 D.C. civilians have applied for a conceal permit; 11 have been approved. 

But gun owners claim the policy is still too restrictive, and the Palmer plaintiffs are currently challenging the district’s permit process in federal court, MacDougall says. 

It’s a “moving target,” says Schamel, who offers these notes to help navigate the current laws: 

• The Metropolitan Police Department’s website (mpdc.dc.gov) includes registration procedures as well as links to the online Firearms Safety Training Course and to lists of acceptable firearms. 
• Gun owners and prospective owners are photographed and fingerprinted, and background checks are required.
• A new handgun bought outside the district must be transferred through a Federal Firearms Licensee, and there’s a fee. 
• A D.C. resident with an existing gun must bring the unloaded firearm to the police department for registration. Don’t bring ammunition, and go directly to the registration site and home. “Call down ahead and tell them that you are coming,” adds Bernie Grimm of The Law Office of Bernard Grimm. He says the advance notice and the direct route are potential safeguards in case you’re pulled over and the officer sees the unregistered gun.

Nonresidents with permits in their home states must apply for D.C. permits, even if only passing through. “Simply put, it’s against the law to carry a firearm in the District of Columbia,” Grimm says. 

Once “murder capital” of the country, D.C.’s murder rate dropped from a high of 482 in 1991 to 181 in 2007; last year, there were 105 homicides, according to the MPDC site. 

Is loosening up restrictions asking for trouble? “If it was up to me,” Mayor Muriel E. Bowser said in a January 2015 speech, as reported by The Washington Post, “we wouldn’t have any handguns in the District of Columbia. I swear to protect the Constitution and what the courts say, but I will do it in the most restrictive way as possible.”