Would it be illegal to remove a trigger lock in self-defense?

The question of whether the District would prosecute a self-defense shooting with a firearm illegally rendered temporarily useful (by removing the trigger lock) is unclear. It's true that standing is hard to establish for speculative cases. That point is countered by the fact that the nature of the situation is out of the plaintiff's control; Hailes would hardly choose to be attacked by a criminal in order to press her case!

There are two relevant cases that come to mind here:

Wilson v United States (1952): Holding that self-defense was an absolute defense to the charge of carrying an unlicensed handgun in the District of Columbia, regardless of the lack of any explicit allowance for it in the text of the law.
The case of Carl Rowan (1988): Charged with possessing an unregistered handgun after he shot an intruder, the jury deadlocked and the judge declared a mistrial. Although he was an outspoken anti-gun advocate, he argued that he had the right to use any means necessary to protect himself and his family.

If self-defense constitutes a valid defense to carrying an unlicensed handgun, and the District would decline to prosecute in such a situation, they would have declined to prosecute Carl Rowan -- and yet they did in fact prosecute him, and did so after the Wilson v United States precedent. To argue that the District intends to regularly ignore such violations, and prosecute only those involving criminal intent, is silly. Not only are there historical counterexamples, it asks us to rest prosecutorial discretion not in the hands of the prosecutor, but instead in the hands of the criminal, who can grant immediate immunity to prosecution for the crime of carrying an unregistered handgun simply by attacking!

I choose instead to believe that carrying an unregistered firearm in the District is either legal or illegal, regardless of the criminal actions of others not under my control.

Frankly, I'm surprised at the persistence from the government's legal team on this issue. Is it the policy of the District not to prosecute self-defense shootings if the firearm was otherwise stored legally and the trigger lock was back in place when the police arrive? Maybe they wouldn't prosecute it if the gun and the shooting were otherwise legal, but I wouldn't want to bet the rest of my life on it.

My take on this point is that they are trying to avoid conceding the standing question by accident, as the District's counsel did in Parker v DC by making clear and unambiguous threats of prosecution. Instead they want to cloud the issue by suggesting that they might not prosecute a self-defense case, even though they have done so in the past.

Posted on 2005-06-17 04:23:31.0 by matthew@triggerfinger.org

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