FPC Challenges D.C.'s Legal Catch-22

Firearms Policy Coalition wants the D.C. Circuit to stop making gun owners choose between a felony conviction and their day in court.

State of play: D.C. bans magazines holding more than ten rounds — a felony carrying up to three years in prison, a $12,500 fine, and a potential lifetime federal gun ban on conviction. FPC members William Wehr-Darroca and Gary Stemple own handguns that came standard with magazines over that limit. To avoid prosecution, they left those magazines outside the District and bought compliant replacements instead.

When they sued, a federal district court didn't touch the constitutional question. It dismissed the case under D.C. Circuit precedent demanding plaintiffs show a "credible threat" of specific prosecution — a bar that's nearly impossible to clear without actually breaking the law first.

FPC filed its opening brief and a petition for initial hearing en banc this week, asking the full D.C. Circuit to scrap that standard entirely rather than wait for a three-judge panel to chip away at it.

The intrigue: This isn't a new complaint. The rule traces back to Navegar v. United States, Seegars v. Gonzales, and Parker v. District of Columbia — and judges on the D.C. Circuit itself have flagged the problem for two decades. In Seegars, Judge David Sentelle wrote there should be "no hierarchy of Bill of Rights protections that dictates different standing analysis." That was more than 20 years ago. The rule's still on the books, and it still applies only to Second Amendment cases — not speech, not religion, not anything else in the Bill of Rights.

FPC President Brandon Combs didn't mince words:

"The government does not get to tell Americans they must either surrender their rights or risk prison just to challenge an unconstitutional law. The Second Amendment is not a second-class right, and gun owners are not second-class citizens."

Yes, but: FPC isn't relying on one argument alone. It's also pointing to the Circuit's recent Angelo v. District of Columbia ruling, which held that money spent complying with a gun law — like buying a restricted-capacity magazine to replace a banned one — can establish standing on its own. That gives the court an off-ramp to reverse the dismissal even if it won't touch the bigger standing rule yet. FPC wants both: an immediate win for its members and a permanent fix for everyone else stuck behind this barrier.

What to watch: The D.C. Circuit has to decide whether to grant en banc review before the usual three-judge panel briefing plays out. This case runs alongside FPC's broader magazine-ban litigation in California, Delaware, Illinois, Virginia, and Washington, plus Viramontes v. Cook County, which gets oral argument before the Supreme Court on December 2. A win in Wehr-Darroca wouldn't strike down D.C.'s magazine ban outright — but it would finally let a court hear the case on the merits instead of tossing it on a technicality built just for gun rights claims.