On Monday, U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth issued preliminary approval on a settlement reached after years of legal action. The evident conclusion in the case was approved by D.C. mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) in June.
The settlement must pass a “fairness hearing” in December before it is finalized. It undoubtedly represents a clear victory for gun owners and the Second Amendment in a district where both are looked upon with scorn by the establishment.
Lamberth in 2021 ruled that the district carried out arrests and prosecutions of six defendants “based on an unconstitutional set of laws.”
All were jailed and had their weapons seized.
In the 2021 ruling, Lamberth blasted the existing laws that banned carrying handguns outside of the home. The statutes in essence prohibited legal carry in all of D.C.
These attacks on the Constitution have since been overturned.
The district will pay $300,000 to each of the six plaintiffs and $1.9 million in attorney’s fees. The rest of the total will be set aside for the over 3,000 people estimated to be due compensation as part of the class-action settlement.
There was a long period when incredibly most D.C. residents were barred from owning weapons even in their own homes. That came crashing down in 2008 in the case of District of Columbia v. Heller. The U.S. Supreme Court set aside the capital’s sweeping handgun prohibition.
A succession of cases further eroded the blanket ban on possessing firearms. Palmer v. District of Columbia struck down the complete ban on carrying handguns in public in 2014. Three years later a federal judge invalidated the requirement that residents show “good cause” to acquire a concealed carry permit.
The lead plaintiff in the class-action lawsuit was Maggie Smith. She was a nurse from North Carolina who was stopped by police in June 2014 in a routine action. She informed officers that she had a pistol in her purse that was licensed in her home state.
That did not matter to the officers, who arrested her, jailed her overnight and seized her weapon. Smith had no criminal record.
Another incident saw Maryland resident Gerard Cassagnol pulled over on his way home from work in Northern Virginia. Officers asked if he had a gun in his vehicle and he told them there was a firearm in a locked safe. Cassagnol provided the combination and was then arrested and jailed for two nights.
He lost his job after the arrest. Another target of the D.C. gun laws faced having his Top Secret security clearance reviewed.
D.C.’s attorneys attempted to argue that the plaintiffs should have researched gun laws or tried to license them. Lamberth had none of that line of reasoning.
In his 2021 ruling, Lamberth noted “there were no actions that the plaintiffs could have taken during the time period in question that would have allowed them to carry a gun for self-defense in the District of Columbia.”
The net effect of court rulings in recent years has been a sharp increase in legal gun ownership in D.C. In 2017 there were a paltry 123 active permits. The Washington Post reported now there are over 15,000 with over one-third held by D.C. residents.
