On December 18, 2024, Firearms Policy Coalition (FPC) filed a new federal lawsuit challenging Washington D.C.’s ban on firearm magazines that can hold more than 10 rounds.
The complaint, known as Wehr-Darroca v. D.C., includes individual plaintiffs, William Wehr-Darroca and Gary Stemple, joined by Firearms Policy Coalition. The suit was filed in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia.
The 23-page complaint lays out the simple argument against such bans, including overwhelming evidence that they are indeed quite common:
Standard capacity magazines do not give rise to “unprecedented lethality.” The modern variants have been widely available and commonly used for at least 100 years, if not longer. Nor are they “uncommonly dangerous.” More than 700 million of them have been produced and sold over the past 30 years, and at least 40 states have no restrictions at all on magazine capacity. Standard magazines are common in all respects. And they by no means constitute a “dramatic technological change,” because they emerged through incremental technological improvements over the past 500 years, culminating in the essential modern features more than a century ago.
“Washington D.C. is not exempt from the Constitution,” said FPC President Brandon Combs. “Today FPC continues its work to end these immoral firearm magazine bans and other unconstitutional policies throughout the country.”
In the landmark Supreme Court case known as District of Columbia v. Heller, the court concluded that the Second Amendment provides an individual right to keep and bear arms for lawful purposes. It also concluded that the D.C. handgun ban prohibited “an entire class of ‘arms’ that is overwhelmingly chosen by Americans for lawful purposes” – and ended that ban which also extended into the home (where self-defense would be a lawful purpose). Standard capacity magazines are classified as part of a firearm.
We will continue to follow this case.
