Responding to news that a libertarian activist is organizing an Independence Day rally in which he hopes to lead a group of people carrying loaded rifles through the District, D.C. Police Chief Cathy Lanier said in a television interview today that her department will meet such a group at the city line.
The demonstration is being organized by Adam Kokesh, a former marine who currently hosts an Internet radio show. On the Facebook page announcing the event, Kokesh writes what is essentially a challenge to the Metropolitan Police Department, stating that he expects his group will get the same escort that MPD provides to other demonstrations that course through the city streets.
Kokesh, who did not reply to several requests for an interview, has described the march as non-violent event. He writes in the rally’s description that if the march, which is scheduled to begin on the Virginia side of the Arlington Memorial Bridge, is met by D.C. police officers, he will volunteer himself to determine “what their actual course of action with someone crossing the line will be.”
Registered ownership of certain types of firearms is legal in D.C., which has some of the strictest gun laws in the country, but carrying them outside—whether concealed or openly—is illegal.
In her interview today on NewsChannel 8’s NewsTalk With Bruce DePuyt, Lanier said that people who attempt to march into the District while openly carrying a rifle will probably be greeted by police officers. “There’s a pretty good chance we’ll meet them on the D.C. side of the bridge,” Lanier said. “Passing into the District with loaded firearms is a violation of the law and it will be treated as such.”
And it probably won’t just be MPD officers that Kokesh’s group, should it materialize, encounters. The Memorial Bridge is under the jurisdiction of the National Park Service, and the U.S. Park Police tells The Washington Post that it, too, would likely deploy officers to meet the rifle-toting demonstrators.
So far, Kokesh has registered more than 2,400 for the march on the event’s Facebook page. He is hoping to get 10,000 RSVPs, assuming that only one-tenth of those who sign up for it on Facebook wil actually turn out.
