The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit heard two cases challenging the District of Columbia’s restrictive gun carry law on Tuesday.
Washington, D.C. passed the law after its previous complete ban on gun carry was struck down as unconstitutional. The law requires that anyone applying for a gun carry permit must demonstrate a specific threat to their life before police will grant a permit. Plaintiffs in the two cases, Wrenn v. D.C. and Grace v. D.C., argue that this clause, often referred to as the "good reason" clause, infringes on their Second Amendment rights and is unconstitutional.
Two district court judges disagreed over that argument. The appeals court decided to hear the cases back-to-back on the same day to consolidate and streamline the hearing process. The court will decide whether or not it will grant a preliminary injunction against the law.
The arguments all relied heavily on the precedents set in landmark Supreme Court cases Heller and McDonald, which struck down gun bans in D.C. and Chicago, respectively.
Judge Thomas B. Griffith asked the plaintiffs’ lawyers why the long-standing prohibitions on carrying firearms in places such as schools or government buildings should be considered any different than prohibitions on carrying firearms anywhere else in public. He labeled the city’s argument that prohibitions on gun carry in rural areas may be unconstitutional but not those in urban areas as "absurd."
The plaintiffs argued that gun carry outside of the home is protected under the Second Amendment’s guarantee that the "right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." The city argued that they must balance that right against public safety interests in a densely populated urban area.
Under the current D.C. law, only 62 permits have been issued as of March 9 in a city with more than 600,000 residents. Although the city argued in court that somebody who has been threatened could obtain a permit, that is not always the case.
Alan Gura, the lawyer for the plaintiffs in Wrenn, said the case was important because it deals with life or death issues.
"People have a fundamental right to defend themselves," Gura told the Washington Free Beacon. "This is a life or death issue for people in the District. The main defect in the city’s law is that it does not treat the right to carry the gun for self-defense as a right. It leaves it to the police chief’s discretion to determine whether you have a ‘good reason’ to exercise something which is a fundamental right."
"That’s not appropriate in our country," he said. "We don’t let the police chief decide whether we have a ‘good reason’ to demand a warrant if she wants to enter our home. We don’t have to have a ‘good reason’ to vote or to speak."
The court is now considering whether or not to grant the preliminary injunction but gave no indication when the ruling might be issued.