Three Years in Prison to Earn a Day in Court: FPC and Two D.C. Gun Owners Ask the Full D.C. Circuit to Overrule the Standing Rule Shielding the District’s Magazine Ban

Estimated reading time: 6 minutes

WASHINGTON, DC — The Firearms Policy Coalition and two District gun owners filed a petition on October 15, 2026, asking every active judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit to take up their challenge to the District’s ban on magazines holding more than ten rounds and to overrule a line of standing precedent that, the petition says, shuts Second Amendment plaintiffs out of that courthouse. Wehr-Darroca v. District of Columbia, No. 25-7159, names the District, Metropolitan Police Chief Pamela A. Smith, and Attorney General Brian L. Schwalb as defendants.

Two pieces of legal vocabulary matter here. A petition for initial hearing en banc asks the full court to hear a case from the start instead of the usual three-judge panel, a step reserved for questions the court considers exceptionally important. Standing is the requirement that a plaintiff show a real, concrete injury before a federal court will hear the case at all. This petition is not about whether the magazine ban is constitutional. It is about whether anyone in D.C. is allowed to ask.

The plaintiffs are William D. Wehr-Darroca and Gary Stemple, both District residents and FPC members. According to the district court opinion attached to the petition, both are licensed to carry concealed in the District, the kind of credential I track on my concealed carry permit information page. Both own registered handguns that came standard with magazines holding more than ten rounds. Under D.C. Code § 7-2506.01, possessing one of those magazines is a felony punishable by up to three years in prison and a $12,500 fine, so both men keep the factory magazines outside the District and bought smaller, compliant ones instead. Neither has been specifically threatened with enforcement beyond the threat every resident faces.

That last fact is what sank them. Judge Rudolph Contreras dismissed the case on September 22, 2025, under three D.C. Circuit decisions: Navegar v. United States (1997), Seegars v. Gonzales (2005), and Parker v. District of Columbia (2007). Read together, those cases require a plaintiff challenging a gun law before enforcement to show he has been “singled out or uniquely targeted by the D.C. government for prosecution.” The plaintiffs conceded the precedent bound the district court and argued only that it was wrong. The judge agreed his role was to grant the motion to dismiss, and wrote that what the plaintiffs really want is for the full D.C. Circuit or the Supreme Court to overturn that precedent.

Now they are asking for exactly that. The petition’s first argument is that the Supreme Court already settled this question. Under Babbitt v. United Farm Workers and Susan B. Anthony List v. Driehaus, a plaintiff has standing when he intends to do something arguably protected by the Constitution, a statute forbids it, and there is a credible threat of prosecution. MedImmune v. Genentech adds that nobody has to expose himself to liability before suing. The petition calls the D.C. approach “a special rule that exists only in this Circuit and for this category of cases,” and leans on Bruen’s warning that the Second Amendment is not “a second-class right, subject to an entirely different body of rules than the other Bill of Rights guarantees.”

The second argument is that no other circuit does this. The petition walks through the Second Circuit’s decision in Antonyuk v. James, which called the credible-threat test a “quite forgiving requirement,” the Seventh Circuit’s decision in Ezell v. City of Chicago, which held that “the very existence of a statute” banning conduct “implies a threat to prosecute,” and similar rulings from the Ninth, Tenth, and Eleventh Circuits. Judges on the D.C. Circuit have said much the same. The petition quotes Judge Williams, who wrote Seegars and later said the panel was constrained by Navegar “even though, as my opinion for the court made clear, it appeared to be in conflict with an earlier Supreme Court decision,” and Judge Brown, who called on the court to reconsider Navegar and “articulate a preenforcement standing doctrine consistent with decades of Supreme Court precedent.”

The third argument is the one that should bother every gun owner, not just the ones in D.C. The petition says the one surefire way to get standing under Navegar is to break the law and get prosecuted. For a magazine, that means a felony conviction and, under 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1), the loss of the right to own any firearm at all. As the petition puts it, the District “is free to pass whatever unconstitutional laws it likes” and rely on that lopsided risk to keep them insulated from review. I think about this in mindset terms. The whole point of carrying lawfully is that you stay inside the law. A rule that tells a law-abiding man the courthouse opens only after he commits a felony is asking him to abandon the very thing that makes him law-abiding.

The D.C. Circuit’s recent decision in Angelo v. District of Columbia is part of why this petition exists. This appeal sat in abeyance, meaning on hold, while Angelo worked through the court. Angelo reversed the dismissal of a challenge to D.C.’s ban on carrying handguns on public transit, but did it by treating the money the plaintiffs spent avoiding transit as an economic injury, without touching Navegar. The petition argues that approach conflicts with the Supreme Court’s decision in Clapper v. Amnesty International, which bars plaintiffs from manufacturing standing by inflicting costs on themselves, and that it rewards the worst laws: a narrow restriction leaves room for some economic injury, while a total ban would leave nothing to point to. Wehr-Darroca and Stemple spent money on compliant magazines too, and their opening brief argues that should be enough under Angelo. The petition’s point is that the court should stop reaching the right result under the wrong framework and overrule Navegar outright.

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These are the plaintiffs’ arguments, and the District has not yet answered them. Oral argument is not scheduled. The court can grant the petition and hear the case with every active judge, deny it and send the appeal to a regular panel, or decline to revisit Navegar at all. Until then, the post-Bruen merits of a magazine ban the D.C. Circuit upheld in 2011 and declined to block in Hanson v. District of Columbia in 2024 stay out of reach for these two plaintiffs.

I will continue tracking Wehr-Darroca v. District of Columbia as the D.C. Circuit decides whether to take it en banc.

Read the original story: Three Years in Prison to Earn a Day in Court: FPC and Two D.C. Gun Owners Ask the Full D.C. Circuit to Overrule the Standing Rule Shielding the District’s Magazine Ban