Second Amendment

Jacob Sullum | 2.3.2026 5:25 PM

If "you bring a gun" to Washington, D.C., Jeanine Pirro warned during a Fox News interview on Monday, "you're going to jail." Pirro, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, was touting her crime-fighting efforts, elaborating on her argument that "taking guns off the street" helps prevent homicides, carjackings, and robberies. But her threat provoked objections from Second Amendment advocates, who noted that the Constitution guarantees the right to carry guns for self-defense and that there is nothing necessarily illegal about doing so in the nation's capital.

The controversy over Pirro's remarks is especially notable because it comes shortly after President Donald Trump and other federal officials dismayed gun rights groups by suggesting that Alex Pretti, the Minneapolis protester who was fatally shot by immigration agents on January 24, was asking for trouble by legally carrying a concealed pistol. Both episodes illustrate the tension between Trump's avowed commitment to "protecting Second Amendment rights" and his frequently authoritarian tough-on-crime instincts.

"I don't care if you have a license in another district, and I don't care if you're a law-abiding gun owner somewhere else," Pirro said on Fox News. "You bring a gun into this district, count on going to jail, and hope you get the gun back."

That broad threat is hard to reconcile with the right to bear arms recognized by the Supreme Court's 2022 decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, which said states may not require that people demonstrate a "special need" to carry guns in public for self-defense. Even before that decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, in the 2017 case Wrenn v. District of Columbia, had permanently enjoined the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) from enforcing D.C.'s "proper reason" requirement for carrying a handgun. Under current D.C. policy, carry permit applicants must be at least 21 and meet several other requirements, including registration of the weapon and completion of a firearms training course.

Notably, those requirements do not include residence in the District of Columbia. "Non-residents can obtain a permit in DC," Rep. Thomas Massie (R–Ky.) noted in an X post responding to Pirro's comments. "I bring a gun into the district every week," Rep. Greg Steube........

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