Washington D.C.'s Gun Carry Ban Struck Down
Over the weekend, a district court judge struck down Washington D.C.'s ban on carrying a handgun in public, the last surviving ban in the country. Palmer v. Washington D.C. Municipal Minute readers may recall that the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals had struck down Illinois' handgun ban (the last surviving statewide ban) in late 2012 in Moore v. Madigan, which we reported on here.
In Saturday’s ruling, the district court ruled that the Second Amendment right does reach beyond the home, finding that to be a natural outgrowth of the fundamental right the U.S. Supreme Court had created six years ago in District of Columbia v. Heller. In his ruling, Judge Scullin declared that the Second Amendment right to carry a gun outside the home applies not only to residents of Washington, D.C., but also to visitors to the city. One of the individuals who sued was not a resident. The ruling applies both to open and concealed carrying of handguns in public.
It is unclear when a new case testing Second Amendment rights outside the home might be pursued at the Supreme Court. The Seventh Circuit's ruling in Moore v. Madigan ended without appeal after the Illinois General Assembly adopted a new concealed carry law, which repealed the statewide ban on public carrying of guns at issue in Moore. A similar decision in the Ninth Circuit against San Diego County's carrying ban is in limbo over pleas by California and others for reconsideration of the case before the en banc Ninth Circuit.
Post Authored by Julie Tappendorf, Ancel Glink
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