Court Strikes Down D.C. Cap on Gun Magazine Capacity

By Patrick D. Lewis

The top court for the District of Columbia struck down the city’s law capping gun magazine capacity at ten rounds yesterday.

The case stemmed from the 2022 arrest of Tyree Benson. Members of a tactical D.C. Police unit tried to stop Benson and two other men on suspicion of criminal activity. Benson fled and had a Glock handgun in his pants when officers caught him. The gun had a magazine capable of holding 30 rounds. Benson was charged with possession of a large capacity ammunition feeding device under a D.C. law that makes it illegal to have a gun magazine capable of holding more than ten rounds.

The case went to the D.C. Court of Appeals, the highest city court, which issued an opinion Thursday that deemed the restriction a violation of the Second Amendment. In the opinion, Associate Judge Joshua Deahl, who was appointed to the court by President Donald J. Trump in 2019, said, “Magazines capable of holding more than 10 rounds of ammunition are ubiquitous in our country, numbering in the hundreds of millions, accounting for about half of the magazines in the hands of our citizenry, and they come standard with the most popular firearms sold in America today. Because these magazines are arms in common and ubiquitous use by law-abiding citizens across this country, we agree with Benson and the United States that the District’s outright ban on them violates the Second Amendment.”

The U.S. Attorney’s Office for D.C., which acts as both the local and federal prosecutor for the city, had already admitted that the ban was unconstitutional, but the D.C. Government intervened in the case to continue fighting that assertion. With this opinion, D.C. leaders would need to ask the court to reconsider or appeal to a federal court. City attorneys say they plan to keep fighting the decision.

Benson’s conviction and others charges related to possession of an unregistered gun in the case were reversed as part of the decision, with Deahl writing that Benson was unable to legally register his gun because he would have been prevented from doing so due to the size of the magazine.

The court’s decision has no impact on gun laws outside of the District because it is a local court, not a federal one; however, it wipes out a charge applied to a large number of D.C. gun offense arrests. When officers catch someone with an illegal gun, they often are able to increase the case against them by tacking on other charges, including the law regarding magazine size.

In his opinion, Deahl wrote that magazines larger than ten rounds are “ubiquitous use for lawful purposes, and there is no history or tradition of blanket bans on arms in such common use, so that the District’s magazine capacity ban violates the Second Amendment.”

Chief Judge Anna Blackburne-Rigsby, appointed by President George W. Bush, issued a dissenting opinion. She said she disagreed with the majority decision as “inconsistent with Supreme Court precedent” and other court decisions, and that Benson’s 30-round magazine was different from an eleven-round magazine. 

“Even accepting that standard handgun magazines typically holding 11, 15, or 17 rounds of ammunition are in common use, there is no similar support for 30+ round magazines,” she wrote. “There is no statistical support for concluding that such a lethal weapon is in common use for lawful purposes.”