by Joseph P. Tartaro | Executive Editor
Cathy Lanier, D.C. Chief of Police.
In mid-October, District of Columbia Police Chief Cathy Lanier announced that the District would soon begin accepting applications from residents and visitors with licenses to carry in their home states for licenses to carry a concealed pistol on the basis of a temporary change in Washington’s law designed to comply with a federal court ruling.
However, no one is happy with the law, not the DC City Council that passed it as a temporary measure. Not pro-gun forces like the Second Amendment Foundation, which filed the suit that ended decades of the District’s 30+year total prohibition on concealed carry. Not the National Rifle Association which doesn’t expect many people to apply under this restrictive law. Probably not anyone who had planned to apply for a concealed carry license, and certainly not Lanier. She’s already proposing at least three changes.
“Living in a crime-plagued area of the city, for example, where killings have occurred or drug sales are common would not be sufficient cause for a concealed-carry permit, Lanier said according to The Washington Times. Owning a home that has been burglarized, even multiple times, also would not necessarily give an applicant standing, she said, because the District has been required since 2008 to allow residents to keep guns in their homes for self-defense.
Rather, Lanier said, for concealed-carry permits, “we’re talking about a specific threat to you. If there is a threat, you have been threatened, you are the victim of stalking, you are the victim of domestic violence,” she said.
According to The Washington Times, Lanier stressed that each application will be evaluated individually.
“Certainly, we can’t anticipate every scenario that someone may present. We have to use reasonable, sound judgment in evaluating what that person articulates as a threat — what makes them feel they have unique circumstances that make them feel threatened.”
She said she would like the council to consider adding provisions in the permanent bill that would ban carrying weapons inside government buildings and in parking lots, in addition to the prohibition for cabbies.
On the good side, she also said she does not support a proposal to publicly identify gunowners who are granted concealed carry permits, undercutting a nascent effort by some lawmakers to make the names available upon request.
Citing safety concerns, the chief said the identity of permit holders and their reasons for seeking to carry a concealed weapon should be shielded from disclosure as the city considers permanent regulations on the carrying of handguns in public.
The law is likely to face additional challenges. Kris Hammond, a former Justice Department civil rights attorney who is running against DC Council Chairman Phil Mendelson (D), said the high bar the council has set for approval of applicants means the District will maintain a de facto ban on carrying concealed weapons, the Times reported.
“They have sent the message that they will deny the vast majority of requests,” said Hammond, noting that as a resident of the District’s Trinidad neighborhood, which has had spasms of violence, he would have no standing to apply.
“My rights as a Trinidad resident should not be determined by what happens at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue,” he said, saying that security issues of protecting the president should be a federal matter, not one that limits gun rights in the city.
Both the temporary law, passed in September under which Lanier will be accepting applications, and the proposed permanent measure would be among the most restrictive nationwide, according to the NRA.
