Washington DC security guard files lawsuit for concealed weapons permit
Washington DC October 27 2022 When D.C. security guard Sanu Millard turned 21, he decided he wanted a concealed-carry license. He carried guns at work in the District, Maryland and Virginia. He had been trained to use guns safely as a teenager and had legally registered two weapons. He had no criminal record. And, as the Supreme Court interprets the Second Amendment, carrying a gun is his right as an American citizen.
But when Millard tried to get a concealed-carry license from D.C. police in 2019, his request was denied. Even though he had never been arrested, police said his involvement in domestic violence incidents — incidents in which, he says, he and his mother were victims — disqualified him.
Now 24, Millard has sued the District, alleging that it discriminates against some people by denying them concealed-carry licenses — and that many of these people are Black men. The lawsuit said D.C. police unreasonably refused licenses to those with minor criminal convictions and arrests with no convictions, sometimes unfairly using their involvement in violent incidents against them.
“The burden of the District’s and the [police] policies fall more heavily on African Americans than any other segment of applicants,” the suit said.
The litigation comes in the wake of a major Supreme Court decision this year that found Americans have a right to carry guns outside the home — a ruling that has proved challenging for some cities as they try to manage increasing gun violence.
Millard and other Second Amendment activists, however, say gun control will not stop gun violence. By preventing people from protecting themselves, laws limiting gun rights only make cities more dangerous, Millard says.
“I have a clean background,” he said. “I’m not willing to break the law. … I’m a victim because of gun-control laws.”
A spokesperson for D.C. police referred questions to the D.C. attorney general’s office, and a spokeswoman there declined to comment on the litigation. About 3,200 concealed-carry licenses were approved last year, according to D.C. police, and around 600 were denied.
Filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia last month, the suit says Millard and two other Black men were unable to get concealed-carry licenses because the city wrongly said they have violent histories or misjudged their criminal records.
D.C. wants to save at-risk people. Violence, missteps marred the effort.
The suit argues that crimes or violent incidents they witnessed or minor crimes they committed should not prevent them from carrying weapons hidden from public view. In 2019, D.C. police released statistics showing 70 percent of people stopped by officers in a one-month period were Black, though the city is no longer majority Black.
A disproportionate number of D.C. police stops involved African Americans
According to the suit, one man was denied a concealed-carry license because he fired a gun in self-defense in a 2019 incident, though he was never charged. In another incident the next year, the suit said, the man did pick up charges: assault with a deadly weapon and carrying a pistol without a license. However, the assault charge was dropped. After the man pleaded guilty to a lesser weapons charge and completed community service, his case was dismissed and his plea withdrawn.
Though the man was not convicted of a crime, D.C. police will not issue him a concealed-carry permit, according to the suit. The suit says such decisions “are not consistent with this Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.”
“There were no founding era laws … preventing felons from owning or possessing handguns nor were there any laws generally directed at persons deemed ‘violent’ by a law enforcement official,” the suit says.
Another man included in the suit had repeated involvement in violent incidents and contacts with law enforcement, it says.
In 2017, according to the suit, he was a witness to a threatened shooting. In 2020, he took a shooting victim to a hospital. In 2021, he was arrested in two separate incidents and charged with assaulting a police officer and possession with intent to distribute marijuana while armed — but those charges were all dropped.
Though the man “has never been charged with a crime by a prosecutor” and already had a concealed-carry license, the suit says, his license was revoked.
“The District’s policymakers enacted an overly restrictive registration and licensing regime as a matter of policy,” the suit says.
Though some men in the lawsuit were denied licenses because of legal technicalities, Millard’s denial was more personal: Police said his involvement in domestic incidents makes him unsuitable for a license even though there’s no indication he instigated them.
In one incident, according to the suit, Millard’s mother’s boyfriend pushed him and bloodied his lip. In another, the boyfriend told police Millard had “mental health issues.”
Millard was never arrested or charged with a crime.
“They didn’t even put handcuffs on me,” he said.
Despite this, Millard was refused a concealed-carry license because he had a “propensity for violence or instability,” according to police. His appeal was denied in 2020 by police, who cited the domestic incidents and the fact that his registered weapons were stored in a guitar case in the common storage area of his mother’s apartment building. Millard, whose attorney provided a copy of the denial to The Washington Post, contends this case was a locked gun storage container shaped like a guitar case.
“On one hand, Mr. Millard is adamant about his gun ownership, yet on the other, his conduct reflects a level of casualness and disturbing naivety towards what can be deadly consequences,” the denial said. The suit counters that denying licenses to domestic-violence victims would create a dangerous precedent, while also discouraging victims of domestic violence from calling the police for protection.
Millard said D.C. gun regulations have left him defenseless on city streets. Armed security guards who can’t take their weapons home might be targeted when they clock out, he said.
D.C. policy just doesn’t make sense when he can carry a weapon at work, Millard said. On a sunny fall Sunday, he stood near the water taxi landing on Old Town Alexandria’s waterfront in Virginia, his Glock 19 in a holster strapped to his waist. This was perfectly legal, and no one seemed to notice.
“It’s only dangerous when I’m not there,” he said.
D.C. is struggling to contain gun violence. In 2021, more than 200 people were killed in the city — a level not seen in more than a decade. This year, homicides are on track to reach a two-decade high, and Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) declared gun violence a public health crisis last year.
“You have a mayor who hates guns,” she said in 2015 — as the suit points out. “If it was up to me, we wouldn’t have any handguns in the District of Columbia. I swear to protect the Constitution and what the courts say, but I will do it in the most restrictive way as possible.”
However, Bowser’s options are limited. The Supreme Court declared this year that Americans may carry guns outside for self-defense.
Joseph Scrofano, one of Millard’s attorneys, said the litigation is not trying to stop reasonable gun laws. It is trying to stop unfair enforcement, he said.
“The existing process gives the chief [of police] unfettered discretion to pick and choose who gets to carry and … disproportionately disqualify African American men,” he said.
Michael R. Ulrich, an assistant professor of health law at Boston University who has studied gun violence, said in an interview that the Supreme Court’s ruling makes it difficult for lower courts to uphold gun restrictions. Fewer gun restrictions means more guns on the street — which means police may assume people are armed when they aren’t.
“More people carrying weapons, especially in densely populated areas like the District, is going to increase gun violence,” he said. “Black men are at significant risk.”
