In an interview with Fox News yesterday, Jeanine Pirro, the top federal prosecutor for the District of Columbia, threatened gun owners: “You bring a gun into the District, you mark my words, you’re going to jail. I don’t care if you have a license in another district, and I don’t care if you’re a law-abiding gun owner somewhere else. You bring a gun into this District, count on going to jail, and hope you get the gun back.” Her words can’t be squared with recent Supreme Court rulings on the Second Amendment—and the positions her own Department of Justice is taking in other contexts.
Pirro should run her position by her colleagues at the Department of Justice, who just argued to the Supreme Court two weeks ago that Americans generally have a Second Amendment right to carry firearms on property open to the public. DOJ is also launching a new campaign to sue cities that infringe upon the right to keep and bear arms—though one suspects they won’t be coming after Pirro’s Washington.
She might want to read back through three Supreme Court opinions. District of Columbia v. Heller struck down the District’s ban on possessing handguns as violating the ancient right to do so for self-defense. McDonald v. City of Chicago recognized that “the right to keep and bear arms” is “among those fundamental rights necessary to our system of ordered liberty.” And New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen confirmed that Americans have a constitutional “right to carry a handgun for self-defense outside the home.” It also described as unconstitutional any hypothetical effort to “effectively declare the island of Manhattan” a gun-free zone, as this “would eviscerate the general right to publicly carry arms for self-defense.” Surely, this is no less true where the setting is the capital city lying between the Potomac and Anacostia Rivers.
If I may be so bold, Pirro could also have a look at Cato’s recent legal briefs explaining why Americans, in fact, have the right to transport arms across domestic borderlines.
In fairness, the intersection of travel and gun regulation is messier than it should be. On the one hand, Americans have the right to travel freely throughout the country, as well as the right to keep and bear arms. One might assume that two core constitutional protections equal a clear right to carry guns as they travel. This is an especially reasonable conclusion because the Bruen decision says a limit on gun rights must be “consistent with this Nation’s historical tradition” to satisfy the Second Amendment—and as Second Amendment scholar David Kopel notes, “there were no laws that required that individuals receive government permission before purchasing or borrowing a firearm” until nearly 150 years after Independence. Further, historically and today, the right to keep and bear arms was often most essential when people were on the road far from home, facing the threats of wild animals and brigands.
On the other hand, in a footnote, Bruen also said jurisdictions can continue to impose their own gun-permit requirements.
While there is tension here worthy of the Supreme Court’s review, it’s incredible for Pirro to tell every visiting gun owner that they’ll be greeted with jail time and the forfeiture of their arms—then turn around today and immediately insist that she is “a proud supporter of the Second Amendment.”
She’s not the only official doing quite the dance around gun rights these days. The Trump administration is still facing heavy criticism from gun-rights advocates following the shooting of Alex Pretti for wrongly saying there’s no constitutional right to bear arms while protesting.
Pirro’s words yesterday doubled down on the administration’s selective approach to the Second Amendment. Americans deserve an answer: Is the right to keep and bear arms their entitlement, or does its reach depend on what’s good for the DOJ?