Gun owners in the nation’s capital are suing in hopes of being allowed to carry firearms on the region’s crime-ridden public transit system.
The lawsuit is one of several filed nationwide after the Supreme Court’s landmark ruling June 23 recognizing a constitutional right to carry firearms in public for self-defense.
The author of the 6-3 opinion, Justice Clarence Thomas, wrote in New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen, that to ban concealed weapons in a specific place, “the government must demonstrate that the regulation is consistent with this Nation’s tradition of firearm regulation.”
The high court has been strengthening Second Amendment protections in recent years. In District of Columbia v. Heller (2008), it held that the amendment protects “the individual right to possess and carry weapons in case of confrontation,” and in McDonald v. City of Chicago (2010), that this right “is fully applicable to the States.”…