Washington, D.C., residents have been in an absurd situation for decades. The District has done all it can to disarm law-abiding residents and, despite the Second Amendment wins at the U.S. Supreme Court in D.C. v. Heller (2008) and NYSRPA v. Bruen (2022), D.C. has continued to make it as difficult as possible for the law-abiding to own and carry firearms for self-defense.
Meanwhile, policies in D.C. allowed criminals to prey on the populace. Then, as the number of carjackings, murders and muggings rose, officials in D.C. obscured the numbers and blamed law-abiding gun owners and our freedom for the violent crime.
Such is why President Donald Trump (R) declared a crime emergency in our nation’s capital; however, instead of acknowledging the problem, politicians on the Left quickly claimed that the crime problem was not serious enough to justify the move.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D) even said, “I walk around all the time. I wake up early in the morning … . And I feel perfectly safe.” Schumer also claimed that Republicans who voice concerns about safety are “full of it.”
The trouble for disingenuous politicians like Schumer is the facts are clear.
John Lott, president of the Crime Prevention Research Center (CPRC), published research that shows the robbery rate in D.C. is 291% higher than the highest state (Maryland). The CPRC research also shows that the murder rate in D.C. is 169% higher than the most-dangerous state (Louisiana) and 434% higher than the national average. Finally, D.C.’s violent crime rate is 39% higher than the highest state, Alaska. It is 198% higher than the average. These comparisons are particularly relevant, as many of the same politicians on the Left who blame crime on law-abiding gun owners have long clamored for D.C. to become the 51st state.
When ranked solely against cities, D.C.’s crime problem outpaced every one of the 20 largest cities and ranked second highest amongst the 25 most-populous cities in terms of violent-crime rates, according to the data.
This is only the start, as crime in the nation’s capital often goes underreported and statistics have been deliberately manipulated to mask the real problem.
One former D.C. Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) officer sued the department in 2020, accusing it of manipulating crime data by misclassifying crimes and downgrading felonies to misdemeanors. Earlier this year, similar charges were levied against the MPD by the police union, which claimed that the directive to change classifications of offenses came from command staff.
“When our members respond to the scene of a felony offense where there is a victim reporting that a felony occurred, inevitably there will be a lieutenant or a captain that will show up on that scene and direct those members to take a report for a lesser offense,” said Fraternal Order of Police Chairman Gregg Pemberton. “So, instead of taking a report for a shooting or a stabbing or a carjacking, they will order that officer to take a report for a theft or an injured person to the hospital or a felony assault, which is not the same type of classification.”
Amidst all of this, law-abiding gun owners have been hamstrung from exercising their constitutional rights. Prior to Heller, which affirmed that citizens have an individual right to keep and bear arms, citizens in D.C. had no functional ability to exercise their rights, but even now, this right is still being infringed upon.
Since 2017, when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit decided Wrenn v. District of Columbia, D.C. has been forced to operate under a shall-issue permitting regime, whereby a person does not need to show an extraordinary need to obtain a carry permit. Despite this, the District’s application procedure is still expensive and onerous.
Law-abiding gun owners in the District are also still treated as if they are the cause of crime by many in D.C. leadership. Shortly after taking office in 2015, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser (D), who is still in that position, said, “You have a mayor who hates guns. If it was up to me, we wouldn’t have any handguns in the District of Columbia. I swear to protect the Constitution and what the courts say, but I will do it in the most restrictive way as possible.”
Meanwhile, despite the Left’s insistence that Trump does not have the power to declare a crime emergency, facts once again matter. Article I, Section 8, Clause 17 of the U.S. Constitution reads: “The Congress shall have Power… To exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten Miles square) as may, by Cession of particular States, and the Acceptance of Congress, become the Seat of the Government of the United States.”
Congress delegated limited autonomy to D.C. in 1973 with the Home Rule Act, but the District’s local government is a creation of, and exists entirely at the pleasure of, Congress.
President Trump’s use of his authority to intercede in the city’s crime problem under “emergency conditions” stems from provisions of the Home Rule Act, and has led to a decrease of violent crime. Even Mayor Bowser had to concede that carjackings were down 87% in the first weeks of the federal takeover.
As the crackdown has been on criminals, not law-abiding armed citizens, this again clearly shows that the actual problem is society’s criminal element, not the 100-million-plus Americans who choose to lawfully own firearms for sport and self-defense.
