Via Shutterstock.
When the D.C. Council passed emergency legislation in response to a federal court ruling that found D.C.’s ban on carrying handguns outside the home unconstitutional, gun rights advocates were, to put it lightly, pissed.
A pro-gun policy coalition from California encouraged supporters to contact to oppose the concealed carry law. Fox 5’s Emily Miller said at a gun rights rally in Virginia that D.C. “is not part of America” because of the restrictive law, which allows people who can show they have a “legitimate need” to carry a handgun in certain parts of the city.
In fact, some gun rights advocates are so upset that they’ve filed a federal lawsuit against D.C. over the law.
The Second Amendment Foundation, a Washington-based gun rights advocacy group, filed its lawsuit against D.C. yesterday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia claiming that the concealed carry law is a violation of Second Amendment rights.
“The city’s requirements to obtain a carry permit are so restrictive in nature as to be prohibitive to virtually all applicants,” SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb said in a statement. “It’s rather like a ‘Catch 22,’ in which you can apply all day long, but no reason is sufficiently good enough for Chief Lanier to issue a permit.”
According to the concealed carry law, a District resident must prove to the Metropolitan Police Department that they “good reason to fear injury to his or her person” or “any other proper reason for carrying a pistol” in order to receive a permit to carry a handgun.
“The last time we checked,” Gottlieb also said, “we had a Bill of Rights that applied to the entire nation, including the District. It’s not, and never has been, a ‘Bill of Needs’.”
You can read the full complaint below:
