D.C. Government Continues Epic Freakout Over Magazine Ban Decision

The District of Columbia’s local government isn’t taking a recent court decision tossing out its ban on “large capacity” magazines lying down. Instead, District officials are pitching a legal tantrum of D.C. Court of Appeals decision in Benson v. U.S. 

Last Wednesday the District filed an en banc review of the three-judge panel’s decision, and pleaded with the court to grant the request as quickly as possible. In fact, D.C.’s attorneys argued that the court shouldn’t even wait for the plaintiffs to reply to the en banc request because “the effect of the Division’s decision on public safety has been extraordinary and immediate, warranting prompt action.”  

Keep in the mind that the DOJ said months ago it would no longer prosecute individuals for possessing “large capacity” magazines, so it’s been up to the District to enforce the misdemeanor since then. So what has been the “extraordinary” result of the Benson decision? 

First, the Division’s facial invalidation of the large-capacity magazine (LCM) prohibition causes immediate and severe risks to public safety. Unless and until the full Court vacates the opinion and grants rehearing en banc, the decision will have ramifications that will be difficult to undo. In particular, the Division’s opinion opens the floodgates for large-capacity magazines (LCMs)—which have been prohibited for nearly a century—to surge into the District. That is no hypothetical. Over a million LCMs flooded into California in the brief period after its LCM prohibition was enjoined but before the ruling was stayed by the district court. 

Yep, and do you know the public safety impact of Freedom Week? There was none. Crime didn’t go up as a result of California being “flooded” with magazines that can hold more than ten rounds, and there’s no reason to believe that D.C.’s experience will be any different. 

Second, as noted in the District’s emergency motion, the decision also affects the District’s ability to enforce laws prohibiting the possession of unregistered firearms and unlicensed carry of concealed weapons. Under the logic of the Division’s decision, as long as offenders also possess large-capacity magazines (LCMs), they are apparently immune from prosecution for carrying an unregistered firearm without a concealed-carry license, absent some other disqualifier. There are hundreds of arrests and prosecutions involving illegal firearm possession and carriage each year, and in recent years around half of those cases have also involved an LCM. 

So, half of the cases involving illegal gun possession already involve a magazine banned in the District? Sounds to me like the ban isn’t stopping people from getting ahold of these magazines, which completely undercuts D.C.’s argument that the decision will lead to a flood of large capacity magazines. 

What about the District’s argument that people can immunize themselves from prosecution for carrying an unregistered firearm without a concealed carry license? Benson’s attorneys provided an rebuttal on Friday in their response to the District’s request for an expedited en banc review. 

Mr. Benson’s convictions for UF [possessing an unregistered firearm] and CPWL [carrying without a license] were “impermissible under the Second Amendment” not just because his firearm was equipped with an 11+ magazine, but because the District’s unconstitutional ban on 11+ magazines made it “impossible” for him to register his firearm and procure a license to carry it. 

Thus, if the Office of the Attorney General immediately ceases enforcing the unconstitutional ban on 11+ magazines and instructs the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) to grant registration applications for firearms equipped with such magazines if the applicants and their firearms otherwise qualify for registration, then going forward, it will no longer be “impossible” to register firearms with 11+ magazines, and it will no longer be “impermissible” to prosecute people for possessing and carrying such firearms without a registration certificate and license. Yet, as of the filing of this opposition, MPD’s “Application for Firearm Registration(PD-219)” still requires applicants “to state the‘No. of Shots’ for the firearm being registered,”and the District of Columbia has not represented to this  Court or to the public that firearms with 11+ magazines can now be lawfully registered.

In other words, so long as the District complies with the appellate court’s decision, it can prosecute as many cases of possession of unregistered guns and carrying without a license as the local Attorney General can find… at least until those statutes, too, are found to be unconstitutional. 

But the District isn’t complying. It’s engaged in an exercise of hand-waving freakouttery that would be laughable were the issue at hand not so serious. D.C. wants to prosecute and imprison people simply for possessing commonly owned ammunition magazines. The D.C. Court of Appeals got it right; this law flies in the face of the text of the Second Amendment and the national tradition of gun ownership in this country. Magazine restrictions weren’t really a thing until the late 1980s, almost 200 years after the Second Amendment was ratified. Laws like the one D.C. is intent on defending are legal and historical outliers, and it’s long past time to confine them to the dustbin of history. 

Editor’s Note: The radical left will stop at nothing to enact their radical gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights.

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