A group of residents from Virginia and Washington D.C. is planning to sue the nation’s capital for its ban on the concealed carrying of firearms through its metro lines and public transportation busses.
Three people from the D.C. area and one person out of Virginia filed a joint lawsuit this past week that issued a demand that they remove the ban on concealed weapons for public transport, as reported by the DCist. The group filed this lawsuit in the wake of the 6-3 ruling from the Supreme Court in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association Inc. v. Bruen, in which they claimed that law in New York attempting to limit concealed carry licenses to only those who could prove their “good moral character” and “proper cause” was entirely unconstitutional.
“Given the decisions in Bruen and Heller, The District of Columbia may not ban the keeping and bearing of arms for self-defense that are not unusually dangerous, deny individuals the right to carry arms in non-sensitive places, deny individuals of the right to keep and carry arms in an arbitrary and capricious manner, or impose regulations on the right to keep and carry arms that are inconsistent with the Second Amendment and the historical tradition of firearms regulation in the United States,” read the lawsuit.
“The regulation at issue in this case, runs afoul of the Second Amendment because it lacks any historical justification, is arbitrary and capricious, and unnecessarily infringes on the core right of self-protection,” it went on.
As of writing, D.C. bans the open carrying of any handguns and has quite a few different restrictions on where someone who is concealed carrying may actually go. The ban when it comes to concealed carry firearms covers all forms of public transportation along with all government buildings, hospitals, schools, the National Mall, universities, and any business in which alcohol is served and consumed, among others.
However, the joint lawsuit only wanted to drop the ban on concealed carry weapons in regards to public transportation systems and a few other restricted areas.
This particular lawsuit hits the city as the crime rate for the D.C. metro area reach a historic high in the past few years. Back in April, Metro police forces officially announced that law enforcement agencies would be increasing the total number of police officers that would be out patrolling the metro lines. Crime still remains insanely high when compared to the rates from pre-pandemic times, even after the rates of serious crime on trains fell by roughly 30% from last year.
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