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1976 Law Is Just One in D.C.'s Maze Of Gun Rules
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The security firms also employ SPOs who work at federal sites, and the weapons issued to them (including semiautomatics) are not registered with D.C. police. No one knows how many of those guards also take guns home.
Shelton can hold forth in encyclopedic detail on the thicket of laws and rules that apply to special police officers. There's a separate maze of regulations governing off-duty D.C. and federal police officers and what types of guns, if any, they are allowed to carry in the District.
Some agencies -- the D.C. police and U.S. Park Police, for example -- fall under Title 18 of the U.S. Code, meaning officers are allowed (even required) to be armed at all times and have police powers throughout the city. Officers in other departments, such as the Library of Congress police, fall under Title 40, Shelton said. They have police powers only where they work and are not allowed to carry guns on private or city property while off duty.
"In D.C., we have all these quasi-law enforcement agencies," he said. "Everywhere, police, police, police -- it's like every federal agency in the city has its own police force. It's hard to keep up with who's under what title."
But he knows.
He's the answer man.
What about armored car guards coming into the city from Maryland and Virginia?
"Federal Armored Car Industry Reciprocity Act," Shelton said without pausing, then quoted from it. The District can't regulate the guns those guards carry.
Still, he said, "even after 14 years, I can get stumped."
A while back, a woman from Manassas called to say she wanted to visit the city with her "spudzooka team." She and her friends liked to launch potatoes out of a length of PVC pipe, igniting compressed hairspray at one end of the pipe to propel the spuds.
"I'm thinking, 'Is this a prank call?' She tells me they want to shoot potatoes at the polo grounds off Ohio Avenue. She wants to know if it's legal."
That one he had to look up.
"It's under Title 7, what we call a destructive device," he said. "Any mechanism that shoots a projectile through a smooth-bore barrel by way of an expectorant."
He laughed.
"In this case, the PVC pipe having a smooth bore, the potato being a projectile and the expectorant being the hairspray, I had to tell her they couldn't do it."
