(WASHINGTON) — The U.S. Attorney for Washington, D.C., Jeanine Pirro, has instructed prosecutors in her office to not seek felony charges for individuals who carry registered rifles and shotguns in the district, sources familiar with the matter confirmed to ABC News.
The policy shift, according to the sources, followed concerns relayed by the Justice Department’s solicitor general, John Sauer, that the district’s restrictive firearm statutes infringe on the Second Amendment rights of residents as affirmed in several recent rulings by the U.S. Supreme Court.
“We will continue to seize all illegal and unlicensed firearms, and to vigorously prosecute all crimes connected with them,” Pirro said in a statement to ABC News. “And we will continue to charge a felon in possession of any of these firearms. Our resolve to prosecute crime is not lessened by defective DC code statutes, as the DOJ works to change those statutes.”
Pirro added in her statement, “If anyone is carrying a weapon illegally, they will absolutely be charged.”
The policy shift, which was first reported by the Washington Post, comes as the administration has publicly touted numbers of illegal firearms seized in its ongoing surge of federal resources intended to combat D.C. crime.
Prosecutions for those types of offenses, according to Pirro’s statement, would continue; the shift is instead related to a D.C. statute that bars people from carrying shotguns or rifles in the capital without permits, which Pirro’s office says violates the Supreme Court’s holdings in two recent Second Amendment cases in 2008 and 2022.
“Nothing in this memo from the Department of Justice and the Office of Solicitor General precludes the United States Attorney’s Office from charging a felon with the possession of a firearm, which includes a rifle, shotgun, and attendant large capacity magazine pursuant to DC Code 22-4503,” Pirro said in her statement to the Post. “What it does preclude is a separate charge of possession of a registered rifle or shotgun.”
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