In case you haven’t noticed, the Firearms Policy Coalition is currently litigating more Second Amendment-related lawsuits than just about all of the other gun-rights groups combined. That’s because the organization’s overall strategy is focused on restoring the right to keep and bear arms by having immoral laws struck down in the courts.
The FPC’s latest target is our nation’s capital—specifically Washington, D.C.’s ban on firearms magazines that hold more than 10 rounds. The case, Wehr-Darroca v. D.C., filed on December 18 in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, challenges the ban on common magazines as a violation of the Second Amendment rights of D.C. citizens.
“Washington D.C. is not exempt from the Constitution,” FPC President Brandon Combs said in a news release announcing the lawsuit. “Today, FPC continues its work to end these immoral firearm magazine bans and other unconstitutional policies throughout the country.”
In the complaint, FPC argues that the magazines being banned are covered under the U.S. Supreme Court’s “common use” precedent as set forth in the 2008 Heller ruling.
“The magazines at issue in this case are not ‘dangerous and unusual,’” the lawsuit states, “but instead are standard components of the sorts of bearable arms in common use for lawful purposes.”
As FPC explains in the complaint, the Second Amendment guarantees the individual right to keep and bear arms, and D.C.’s law doesn’t recognize that right.
“As protected by this constitutional provision, Plaintiffs, and other law-abiding, peaceable residents of the District, have a fundamental, constitutionally guaranteed right to keep common arms for defense of self and family and for other lawful pursuits,” the complaint states. “Despite this guarantee, Defendants have enacted and enforced a flat prohibition on the sale and/or possession of common, standard capacity magazines capable of holding more than 10 rounds of ammunition. The District’s Ban, and Defendants’ enforcement thereof, denies individuals who reside in the District, including the individual Plaintiffs and Plaintiff Firearms Policy Coalition, Inc.’s (“FPC”) similarly situated members, of their fundamental, individual right to keep and bear common arms.”
The complaint also takes issue with the District of Columbia’s assertion that magazines designed to hold more than 10 rounds are somehow “uncommonly dangerous.”
“Standard capacity magazines do not give rise to ‘unprecedented lethality,’” the complaint further explains. “The modern variants have been widely available and commonly used for at least 100 years, if not longer. Nor are they “uncommonly dangerous.” More than 700 million of them have been produced and sold over the past 30 years, and at least 40 states have no restrictions at all on magazine capacity. Standard magazines are common in all respects.”
In the complaint, the FPC further points out how D.C.’s ban has no effect on violent criminals, only law-abiding gun owners, rendering it useless for curbing violent crime.
“Unlike law-abiding citizens, violent criminals are not meaningfully constrained by the District’s Ban,” the complaint states. “Given the hundreds of millions of standard capacity magazines in circulation in the country, it is not difficult for violent criminals to acquire them through illegal sales or importation despite the District’s Ban. And unlike law-abiding citizens, violent criminals will have no compunction about violating the Ban.”
In the end, plaintiffs are asking the court to issue a declaratory judgment that the ban violates Second Amendment rights and issue a permanent injunction barring D.C. officials from enforcing the ban.
