The D.C. city council, which pushed through the restrictive ‘may-issue’ gun law back in 2014. (Photo: ABC 7)
The District of Columbia is fighting tooth and nail to keep its “good reason” requirement for obtaining a concealed carry permit on the books.
The City, in the case of Wrenn v. District of Columbia, filed an appeal last week asking the entire U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia to review a ruling by a three-judge panel from the same court that struck down the requirement back in July.
The city’s request for an en banc review was no surprise. The anti-gunners that run D.C. love the “good reason” requirement because it is a convenient way for police to deny Joe Public a carry permit.
“The Second Amendment Foundation expected the City of Washington, DC to file this appeal in an attempt to try to overturn our court victory that said their virtual ban on the right to carry a firearm for self-protection was unconstitutional,” said Second Amendment Foundation founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb.
Under the District’s concealed carry law signed into effect back in 2014, permit applicants had to provide to the police chief a “good reason to fear injury to his or her person or property” or “any other proper reason for carrying a pistol.”
In other words, D.C. was treating the 2A like a privilege — not like a fundamental right. You had to not only seek permission but provide evidence that you were going to be a victim of an attack before it happened (Hmmm… think about that logic). And if the police chief didn’t accept your reason, well, then he or she could deny your application willy-nilly.
SAF challenged the “good reason” requirement in court and won. The District argued that because of its dense population that includes “thousands of high-ranking federal officials and international diplomats” it needs a more restrictive issuing standard.
That three-judge panel, in a 2-1 decision, shot down that reasoning, saying that “the District’s good-reason law is necessarily a total ban on exercises of that constitutional right for most D.C. residents. That’s enough to sink this law under (the 2008 U.S. Supreme Court’s Heller ruling).”
But the District is hoping that the full court will buy into their claptrap about “high-ranking officials” and “diplomats” and overturn the panel’s decision.
“They have no intention of complying with any court decision that supports the right to keep and bear arms,” Gottlieb said. “It took the Heller decision to force them to allow a gun in your own home for self-defense. It took the Palmer decision, another SAF case, to force them to repeal their total ban on carry and now they are kicking and screaming about losing the Wrenn decision.”
“Municipal stubbornness cannot be allowed to outweigh the constitution,” added Gottlieb. “A civil right should not be subject to bureaucratic neurosis.”
We’ll keep you posted on this case.
Washington Depraved Criminals isn’t a real city or state, anyway. It has no legitimate authority. It is just a den of thieves , a kosher hideaway for the biggest criminals.
I am an American white man. That is good reason to arm and protect myself and my family. I shouldn’t need some bs piece of plastic for that.
How are CC cases administered where denial occurs; to ascertain and document fully each of the bureaucratic decisions?
Quandary; what individual has the foresight, intuition or mere ability to grade an other’s concept of need? Photo of the council dais rather illustrates my comments below.
What manner of business they they conduct to occupy so many seats? Has the D.C. become so populous to require a larger body than say, City of Los Angeles? Perhaps each state of the union has a representative in D.C. council, besides those inhabiting Congress? And most of all, are they compensated for services rendered, virtually de rigueur in all but smallest burgs imaginable? Would there be any additional subsidy, gifting, or equivalent benefits from their constituents be revealed within an investigation?
I’d relish the opportunity to appear at their podium, or read reports of a local citizen doing same; during public council meetings when issue is on that evening’s docket.
That occurrence would need but a simple demand.
“If you insist ‘good-reason’ be provided by applicants, I call for a bill providing crystal balls and designate attendant fortune-tellers full time, without charge, to citizens refused issue of concealed carry permits.”, “Further, bill requires a data-base on qualified seers be maintained, that any who desire not apply are afforded equal protection.”
“Good Reason law ” Has been that way for years here in Clan Diego Kalifornia, Took me 8 weeks and 600.00 to get my CCW
Sheriff William Gore has to GO !
I appreciate our law enforcement But this guy has no “Good Reason” to be head Sheriff over any town or city.
Amazing how ineffectual local governments work to disarm honest citizens in their increasingly violent cities. By definition the criminals that are terrorizing these cities don’t pay any attention to laws, but they do respect being met with force. In 2014 the chief of police in Detroit credited increased private gun ownership with a 7% drop in violent crime.
What next? Knife free, base ball bat free,golf club free, fire place poker free, how about vehicle free? Is there no stopping stupidity? Now that would be a great cause to champion. These people (good reason proposal) is for their own political,economic gain not the protection or interest to the citizens. I would look deeper .There is always a reason that benefits these idiots when the rights of the people in this country is denied.
The second amendment is a right and not just a privileg and needs to be treated as an American right like all of the rest of our constitution..
And there is no “must have a good reason” qualifier anywhere in the 2A!
The 2nd. amendment is a “RIGHT” and not a privilege and should be the law of the land.
For being allegedly intelligent, too many judges seem to have a hard time understanding what “shall not be infringed” means.
I’m a gun owner and a fan of the constitution. You have to take the entire constitution into consideration instead of simply referring to a portion of a sentence that supports your point of view. You can’t prevail against your enemy unless you understand their tactics. To paraphrase, the rights not enumerated in the constitution, vested in the federal government, or inherent in individual citizens are the purview of the states. It’s why each state has different firearm regulations. When a state passes a law that violates the constitutional rights of the citizens it takes awhile for the process of law to sort it out. I would argue in favor of a class action lawsuit by the residents of D.C. against the agency which deprived them of their rights. If you want to curb government overreach, you have to make it fiscally untenable.
In keeping with deanbob [above] and Ronnies’s comments just how much of the Constitution, Bill of Rights, jurisdiction of the IRS, imposition of a draft, taxations, National Guard posts, etc actually apply in the D.C.? It’s not a county, state, country or city; and all by design. I don’t recall the exact reasoning, other than to isolate them in a legal sense. Seems illogical to house residents, sort of illegitimate step children of who? It should be conducted as a service area; rather like a military base without on site housing. Of course the commute would be a bitch.
If people want to live in a gun free zone, they should buy inrto an HOA designed for that purpose. Private land, private controls. any part of the us that is not privately held should be legal to carry, cconcealed or open, your choice.
Another example of bureaucracy run amok. What part of the constitution and three court decisions don’t these hard heads understand. IT’S A CONSITUTIONAL RIGHT AFFIRMED BY THE SUPREME COURT OF THE U.S. THAT A CITIZEN HAS A RIGHT TO CARRY A FIREARM and they don’t have to give some bureaucrat a “good reason” for doing so. Spend taxpayer’s money on more cops, more teachers and upgrading your whole city and stop wasting it on liberal feel good stuff.
I agree, the argument should be turned around on them.
Force them to show “good reason” for denying a citizen their constitutional rights.
All citizens have the right to bear arms under the constitution, period. I shouldn’t have to ask anyone’s permission to exercise my rights.
I absolutely WON’T ask anyone’s permission to exercise my natural rights.
Finally, I see comments supporting the correct mental perspective to fight these totalitarians that I’ve been advocating for about a decade now.
Brings tears to my old but deadly accurate eyes. We have to support outside legal groups who focus on absolute, uncompromised, free country gun rights. There’s a couple decent ones but John Whitehead’s ‘Rutherford Foundation’ stands out among them.
The entire ‘gun LAW’ system needs to be reversed, repealed, and prohibited from emerging ever again if we want to retain our true uninfringed constitutional right to bear arms. Like the founder’s designed..,No if’s,ands, or buts. Not qualifiers or conditions. If a criminal uses a gun instead of a better weapon of mass destruction like a truck, then it should be no different than a knife or club. His whole BODY is banned from society for what ever period he needs. If he can’t ‘rehabilitate’ and once again join society as a law abiding citizen, then he stays in prison until he does.
The reason these municipalities get away with even making these laws of controlling your possession of weapons is because they already got away with one of the greatest hoaxes ever perpetrated on an egaliatarian society. They made the most egregious anti-2nd/A law that started all the other laws. Making an ex convict permanently banned from ever possessing a firearm again!
Besides being the perfect storm for a deluge of following laws to eventually target focus any and all political oppositions and dissidence and disarm them, like they already did in the 70’s with their fraudulent ‘war on drugs efforts’, Anti-2nd/A
laws like the 68 GCA allowed state and local municipalites to pile on the bobsled down the slippery slope of Mt, Control Freak and freely decide what we can and must do with our guns in the meantime before they can figure out new laws to ban them from society completely.
The simplest cure for all gun control was once told to me by an old social science professor at a major Catholic Universit.
She said all you have to do to prevent them from ever disarming the country is to remove the ‘laws’ that make everybody convicted of a felony’ prohibited from gun ownership, even after they are re-integrated into society. As a cop I knee jerked to this and said, whoa, you gotta realize that there’s some people who just should not have guns? She smiled and then It hit me.
If they’re THAT bad, then they should be in jail with No weapons, or in an institution of rehabilitation.
It was amazing to her how gullible the population of America is to fall for that? Because if they can’t make any laws that permanently disarm a citizen, Which never work from a crime perspective anyway, then ‘ll never be able to passively disarm the Entire population with any laws!