The Trump administration is suing the local government of Washington, D.C., over its gun laws, alleging that restrictions on certain semiautomatic weapons run afoul of Second Amendment rights.
The U.S. Department of Justice filed its lawsuit Monday in U.S. District Court in the District of Columbia, naming Washington's Metropolitan Police Department and outgoing Chief of Police Pamela Smith as defendants and setting up another potentially seismic clash on how broadly the courts interpret individual gun possession rights.
Recommended Videos
“The United States of America brings this lawsuit to protect the rights that have been guaranteed for 234 years and which the Supreme Court has explicitly reaffirmed several times over the last two decades,” the Justice Department states.
It's the second such lawsuit the administration has filed this month: The Justice Department also is suing the U.S. Virgin Islands, alleging the U.S. territory is obstructing and systematically denying American citizens the right to possess and carry guns.
It's also the latest clash between the District of Columbia and the federal government, which launched an ongoing law enforcement intervention into the nation's capital over the summer, which was meant to fight crime. The district's attorney general is challenging the deployment of the National Guard to the city as part of the intervention in court.
In Washington, Metropolitan Police Department spokesman Sean Hickman said the agency does not comment on pending litigation.
The Justice Department asserts that the District is imposing unconstitutional bans on AR-15s and other semiautomatic weapons the administration says are legal to posses under the Supreme Court's 2008 Heller precedent, which also originated from a dispute over weapons restrictions in the nation’s capital.
In that seminal case, the court ruled that private citizens have an individual right to own and operate weapons “in common use today,” regardless of whether they are part of what Second Amendment text refers to as a “well regulated militia.”
“There seems to us no doubt, on the basis of both text and history, that the Second Amendment conferred an individual right to keep and bear arms,” the majority reasoned. The justices added a caveat: “Of course, the right was not unlimited, just as the First Amendment’s right of free speech was not.”
The Justice Department argues that the District has gone too far in trying to limit weapons possession under that caveat. Administration lawyers emphasize the Heller reference to weapons “in common use today,” saying it applies to firearms that District of Columbia residents cannot now register. Those restrictions in turn subject residents to criminal penalties for unregistered firearms, the administration asserts.
“Specifically, the District denies law-abiding citizens the ability to register a wide variety of commonly used semi-automatic firearms, such as the Colt AR-15 series rifles, which is among the most popular of firearms in America, and a variety of other semi-automatic rifles and pistols that are in common use,” Justice Department lawyers write.
“D.C’s current semi-automatic firearms prohibition that bans many commonly used pistols, rifles or shotguns is based on little more than cosmetics, appearance, or the ability to attach accessories,” the suit continues, “and fails to take into account whether the prohibited weapon is ‘in common use today’ or that law-abiding citizens may use these weapons for lawful purposes protected by the Second Amendment.”
The Justice Department does not include any individual plaintiffs from Washington, D.C., alleging any violations of their constitutional rights. That's different from the Heller case, which is named for Dick Heller, a Washingtonian who filed a civil lawsuit challenging the city's handgun ban in 2003.
The administration argues in the suit that it has jurisdiction to challenge current District laws under the sweeping federal crime law of 1994.