1976 Law Is Just One in D.C.'s Maze Of Gun Rules

If anyone can navigate the web of D.C. gun rules, it's Lt. Jon Shelton, head of gun registration. But even he can't say how many legal guns are in the city. (By Marvin Joseph -- The Washington Post)
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In a third-floor room at D.C. police headquarters on Indiana Avenue NW, where three officers working for Shelton keep track of legal guns in the city, five wide filing cabinets are filled with registration forms, some decades old. Owners of registered firearms are required to inform Shelton's office if they move out of the city or if their guns are lost, stolen or disposed of. But not everyone complies with the rule.

"Don't get me wrong, we do get many people who do the right thing," Shelton said. "But this is a very transient population here in Washington, and I can vouch for the fact that a lot of people don't do the right thing. You'll have a deceased person, and the wife finds the gun in a sock drawer or something, and she gets rid of it, and we never hear about it."

After the D.C. Council approved the gun control measure 32 years ago and then-Mayor Walter E. Washington (D) signed it into law, a registration period began for residents who owned firearms before the bill was passed. For weeks, people flocked to police headquarters, lining up in halls to fill out forms that would allow them to keep their weapons. About 23,000 guns were registered, according to news accounts at the time.

Most of those were handguns. With some exceptions, clip-loaded semiautomatics, capable of rapid fire, were outlawed, and registrations were accepted only for revolvers. No one knows how many are still in the city.

In the decades since, thousands more handguns have been registered -- by D.C. police officers who are allowed to carry personal semiautomatics while off duty and by security firms that are authorized to issue revolvers to trained, police-certified guards working on private or city property. Of the registrations that have accumulated in Shelton's files over the years, 41,898 are for handguns.

And that doesn't include the untold numbers of personal handguns that federal law enforcement officers carry while off-duty and pistols carried by security guards who work on federal property. Because the District is not allowed to regulate those weapons, many security guards at federal sites carry semiautomatics that are not registered with the city; their counterparts on private and city property can carry only registered revolvers.

Then there are long guns, many thousands of them.

Although handgun ownership is prohibited for most residents who did not have them before the law took effect, rifles and shotguns are not entirely banned. To be legal, Shelton said, a rifle must have at least a 16-inch barrel, a shotgun must have at least a 20-inch barrel, and neither can be capable of semiautomatic fire. Of the 66,019 registrations, 13,919 are for shotguns, and 10,202 are for rifles.

Only D.C. residents can register guns in the city, and they must pass background checks and a 20-question written test.

As with handguns not owned by law enforcement officers, shotguns and rifles must be kept on private property, unloaded and either disassembled or fitted with trigger locks. Owners are allowed to transport their weapons only to places outside the city where gun possession is legal, such as hunting areas or target ranges.

Armed, police-certified security guards (called "special police officers," or SPOs) who work on private or city property can take their company-issued revolvers home if there is no suitable place to store them where they work, Shelton said. But the guards must "take them directly home, without any deviation," he said, and the weapons have to be kept unloaded and either trigger-locked or disassembled.

Shelton said 121 security companies have registered 2,277 revolvers for use by SPOs assigned to work on private or city property. How many take guns home after hours is anyone's guess.