Several Washington, D.C., and Virginia residents are suing the nation’s capital for prohibiting carrying concealed firearms on its public transportation busses and metro lines.
Three residents of D.C. and one Virginian filed a joint lawsuit last week demanding the city’s ban on concealed weapons on public transit be scrapped, according to the DCist. The group filed the suit following the Supreme Court’s 6-3 decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association Inc. v. Bruen, which found a New York law limiting concealed carry licenses to those who could show “good moral character” and “proper cause” unconstitutional.
“Given the decisions in Bruen and Heller, The District of Columbia may not ban the keeping and bearing of arms for self-defense that are not unusually dangerous, deny individuals the right to carry arms in non-sensitive places, deny individuals of the right to keep and carry arms in an arbitrary and capricious manner, or impose regulations on the right to keep and carry arms that are inconsistent with the Second Amendment and the historical tradition of firearms regulation in the United States,” the lawsuit states.
“The regulation at issue in this case, runs afoul of the Second Amendment because it lacks any historical justification, is arbitrary and capricious, and unnecessarily infringes on the core right of self-protection,” it continues.
D.C. currently prohibits the open carrying of handguns and has numerous restrictions on where someone who is concealed carrying may go. The ban on concealed carry covers all public transportation as well as government buildings, the National Mall, hospitals, schools, universities, any business where alcohol is consumed, and others.
The lawsuit, however, only seeks to remove the ban on concealed carry weapons on public transportation. It also lays out distinct differences between public transportation systems and the other restricted areas.
The court filing comes as crime on the D.C. metro has hit historically high levels in recent years. Metro police announced in April that law enforcement would be increasing the number of officers patrolling metro lines. Crime still remains high compared to pre-pandemic rates, even after rates of serious crime on trains fell more than 30% from last year.