While D.C. U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro and DOJ officials have determined that individuals who are openly carrying shotguns and rifles registered with the D.C. police should not face criminal charges, the federal agents who are serving as part of President Donald Trump's surge of law enforcement in our nation's capital are still arresting individuals who are carrying handguns without D.C. permits.
As Reuters reports, in the little more than two weeks since the president declared a crime emergency in D.C., they've been involved in more than a dozen arrests that involve carrying without a license.
In the first such analysis, Reuters examined more than 500 criminal cases filed in local court since August 11, when Trump declared a crime emergency in the city. Together, they offer one of the clearest pictures of how the federal government is attempting to tackle crime in the capital.
The records show Trump’s anti-crime task force was involved in at least 69 local cases over the past two weeks, of which nearly half were comparatively minor offenses, including misdemeanors.
The rest were felonies under the local D.C. code, not the more serious federal felonies that agencies usually handle. About half of those were for carrying a firearm without a license, possessing drugs with intent to distribute, or both.
None of the cases Reuters reviewed involved someone being charged with a violent offense.
Unfortunately, Reuters didn't report how many of these arrests were purely based on possession of a pistol without a license, and its analysis failed to disclose the amount of drugs that were seized in cases involving both firearms and narcotics. Washington, D.C. has decriminalized the possession of up to two ounces of marijuana, for instance, though it remains illegal under federal law to possess firearms as an unlawful user of drugs.
Reuters did, however, manage to get a quote from Joe Biden's point man on gun control efforts.
In the past, federal efforts to target crime in U.S. cities have begun with months of investigative work to identify gun traffickers and repeat criminals, said Steven Dettelbach, who was director of the ATF until January.“You focus on identifying trigger-pullers and putting them in jail, not low-level people.”
Dettelbach has a point, but it's one that he ignored during his tenure at ATF. Brian Malinowski, who was shot and killed when ATF raided his home in the pre-dawn hours on the suspicion that he was an unlicensed gun dealer, wasn't a "trigger puller". Neither were any of the individuals who had their forced reset triggers seized by the agency after the ATF determined they were "machine guns." Heck, Patrick "Tate" Adamiak is serving a 20-year prison sentence for possessing and selling legal gun parts, and he is neither a gun trafficker nor a repeat criminal.
I also can't help but notice that neither Dettelbach nor any of the national gun control groups has taken specific issue with federal agents enforcing D.C.'s gun laws, even if they've objected in principle to the National Guard and federal agencies doing street policing. Instead, it's been Second Amendment organizations like Gun Owners of America and politicians like Rep. Thomas Massie who've raised concerns about using these agencies to strictly enforce at least some of D.C.'s draconian gun laws.
I don't think there's much doubt that the influx of law enforcement (and troops) in D.C. has reduced violent crime. The flip side of that, though, is that law enforcement agents are going to enforce the law, and if there are fewer major crimes being committed then inevitably there's going to be an increased focus on enforcing minor offenses, including simple possession of a gun without a D.C. permit.
Last Thursday, Homeland Security Investigations and Secret Service agents chased down a fleeing suspected drug dealer in a public park and caught him with four heroin capsules and 10 MDMA pills. The next day, a four-agency team helped police arrest a man for stealing a jeweled watch and Gucci clothing.In one case, U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents helped with an undercover operation to buy $25 worth of marijuana, according to the court records.Still, the show of force alone appears to have jolted some suspects into confessing.Shortly after midnight on August 15, a team of police officers and agents from four separate federal agencies approached two people watching a movie on a laptop in a parked car by the side of the road in a park that was closed for the night.Unsettled by the large police presence, one of the people said, “I’m so f*****” and admitted he had a gun in the glove box. The officers charged him with carrying a pistol without a license.
If this is typical of the arrests that are being made, then I'd say Trump's surge of law enforcement has been so successful it's no longer necessary, at least at the moment. If these agents are going to continue to enforce D.C. law, though, then the administration should issue a directive that mere possession of an unlicensed pistol will not lead to an arrest or prosecution. At the very least those charged solely with possessing a gun without a permit should have their cases diverted or dismissed to allow them to apply for and receive a permit instead of being charged with a felony that will bar them from legally possessing firearms in the future.
