BELLEVUE, WA – The Second Amendment Foundation today filed an amicus brief in support of a District of Columbia resident’s motion for a preliminary injunction against the city’s ban on carrying handguns within its public transportation system. The case is known as Angelo v. District of Columbia.
“The District of Columbia’s ban on the carrying of handguns within its public transportation system (the ‘Metro ban’) is flatly unconstitutional under the plain text of the Second Amendment and binding case law,” writes attorney and SAF Executive Director Adam Kraut. The brief was filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
District residents Gregory Angelo, Robert Miller, Cameron Erickson, and Tyler Yzaguirre are seeking a preliminary injunction and summary judgment to prevent the city from further enforcement of the ban. The District maintains that metro transportation, which includes buses and the subway system, falls within the definition of “sensitive places” where firearms can be prohibited, simply because they are often crowded, transport federal employees, and they are used by school students to go to and from schools. Kraut’s brief says this argument “misses the mark.”
“Even if this Court were to accept that schools are in fact a ‘sensitive place’,” Kraut says in his brief, “it cannot logically follow to extend the meaning well beyond the schoolhouse walls. To do so, in this context, would render an entire transit system utilized by thousands of other people at all hours of the day a sensitive place simply because children take it to and from school twice a day for limited periods of time.”
“As it has done since trying to defend its ban on handguns during the Heller challenge 14 years ago,” SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb observed, “the District is literally grasping at straws in an effort to keep its citizens disarmed. That runs counter to the very fabric of our Second Amendment, especially following the Supreme Court ruling in Bruen.”
“The District can’t be allowed to prevent thousands of people from exercising their right simply because the city isn’t able to set up a dedicated form of transportation for school students,” Kraut explained. “To consider public transportation a ‘sensitive place’ would open Pandora’s Box, enabling the District to restore, in a de facto sense, the very ban struck down by the Supreme Court back in 2008.”