Washington, D.C. gun owners who want to challenge the city’s ban on magazines holding more than 10 rounds currently face a daunting choice: risk a felony prosecution first, or stay out of court entirely. The Firearms Policy Coalition is now asking the full U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit to tear down that barrier, filing an en banc petition on October 15 in a case called Wehr-Darroca v. District of Columbia.
The petition asks the full D.C. Circuit — meaning all of its active judges, not just a three-judge panel — to reverse the dismissal of the lawsuit and let it proceed, according to the Firearms Policy Coalition. As The Daily Caller reported, the coalition argues that plaintiffs should not have to show a specific threat of arrest just to establish standing in a pre-enforcement challenge to D.C.’s gun laws, according to the petition itself. The case centers on D.C.’s ban on magazines capable of holding more than 10 rounds of ammunition.
That ban, enacted under the Firearms Registration Amendment Act of 2008, is codified at D.C. Code § 7-2506.01(b), according to court filings posted to GovInfo. In 2019, the D.C. Council raised the stakes considerably: possessing a high-capacity magazine went from a misdemeanor to a felony carrying up to three years in prison and a $12,500 fine under D.C. Code § 7-2507.06(a)(4), according to a legal explainer from Koehler Law.
A Decades-Old Standing Rule Under Fire
The coalition’s petition traces the current standing problem back to Navegar v. United States, a 1997 ruling, according to the petition. That decision held that firearm manufacturers could not challenge federal gun prohibitions before enforcement without showing an individualized, specific threat of prosecution directed at them, per the Cato Institute’s account of the case’s legal legacy…