(Reuters) -Federal prosecutors in Washington, D.C., will no longer seek charges against people who violate a local law prohibiting individuals from carrying rifles or shotguns in the nation’s capital, the Washington Post reported late on Tuesday.
The decision, which represents a break from the office’s prior policy, comes amid what President Donald Trump has described as a crime crackdown in Washington.
The president has deployed hundreds of National Guard troops and federal agents to the city’s streets to combat what he says is rampant crime, in an extraordinary exercise of presidential power.
In a statement provided to Reuters, the District of Columbia’s U.S. attorney, Jeanine Pirro, said the new policy will not preclude prosecutors from charging people with other illegal firearms crimes, such as a convicted felon found in possession of a gun.
“We will continue to seize all illegal and unlicensed firearms,” she said.
The D.C. code in question bars anyone from carrying a rifle or shotgun with narrow exceptions. Pirro, a close Trump ally, argued in a statement to the Post that the law violates two U.S. Supreme Court decisions expanding gun rights.
In 2008, the court struck down a separate D.C. law banning handguns and ruled that individuals have the right to keep firearms in their homes for self-defense. In 2022, the court ruled that any gun-control law must be rooted in the country’s historical traditions to be valid.
Unlike U.S. attorneys in all 50 states, who only prosecute federal offenses, the U.S. attorney in Washington prosecutes local crimes as well.
The White House has touted the number of guns that law enforcement has seized since Trump began surging federal agents into the city. In a social media post on Wednesday, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi said the operation had taken 76 illegal guns off the streets and resulted in more than 550 arrests, an average of 42 per day.
The city’s Metropolitan Police Department arrested an average of 61 adults and juveniles per day in 2024, according to city statistics. The Trump administration has not specified whether the arrest totals it has cited include those made by MPD officers or only consist of those made by federal agents.
D.C. crime rates have stayed mostly the same as they were a year ago, according to the police department’s weekly statistics.
As of Tuesday, the city’s overall crime rate is down 7% year over year, the same percentage as before the crackdown. D.C. has also experienced the same declines in violent crime and property crime as it did beforehand, according to the data.
Trump has defended his decision to deploy soldiers in the capital as necessary to stem a wave of violent crime. City officials have rejected that assertion, pointing to federal and city statistics that show violent crime has declined significantly since a spike in 2023.
The president has said, without providing evidence, that the crime data is fraudulent. The Justice Department has opened an investigation into whether the numbers were manipulated, the Post reported on Tuesday, citing unnamed sources.
(Reporting by Sarah N. Lynch in Washington, Brendan O’Brien in Chicago and Joseph Ax in New YorkEditing by Rod Nickel)
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