Nearly two dozen people have been charged with illegally carrying guns on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., so far this year, including four in the past month, according to a CBS News review of court records and U.S. Capitol Police reports. There have been nearly as many gun arrests by Capitol Police just over midway through 2023 as there were in all of 2022, and the pace has been picking up since the Capitol Complex reopened to tourist visits at the beginning of the year.
The arrests primarily include cases of people who claim they mistakenly or unknowingly had guns in their bags as they reached Capitol checkpoints, despite the District of Columbia’s strict laws requiring firearms licenses and prohibiting open carrying of guns.
The CBS News review found the people arrested include an Iowa man who was accused of carrying a gun in a bag attached to the baby stroller. A police affidavit said the gun was loaded with four rounds of ammunition. The gun was spotted at a security checkpoint to the Hart U.S. Senate Building, as the man and his family tried to enter on May 12.
On Monday, a 43-year-old Texas man was stopped while carrying a semiautomatic handgun at an entrance to the U.S. Capitol Visitor’s Center. A police report said the man told officers he didn’t know the gun was in his bag. He’ll face a series of charges, including possession of an unregistered firearm, unlawful possession of ammunition and possession of a high-capacity feeding device.
On Wednesday, a Washington, D.C., man pleaded guilty to a criminal charge, weeks after he was stopped with a semiautomatic handgun, loaded with 9-millimeter ammunition, at a checkpoint to the Longworth House Building. The police report said the man, at first, claimed the gun belonged to his wife, before he later told officers he’d purchased the gun “on the street” for $600 to protect his family.
The CBS News review found an incident on June 14, in which a Virginia man was stopped when a gun was seen in his bag at an entrance to the Ford House Office Building. The police report said the Manassas, Virginia, man, 25, told officers he “knew what (they) were looking for,” and then before he was taken into custody, asked, “Can I just leave?”
The firearms incidents often require a police closure of checkpoints and nearby areas. A Capitol Police spokesperson said, “People are not allowed to bring any weapons here. Even if you have a gun that is legally registered in another state, or the District of Columbia, it is still illegal to bring it on Capitol Grounds. The goal is to keep everyone around the entire campus safe.”
According to the CBS News review, Capitol Police have made 19 firearms arrests so far in 2023, nearly matching the 25 they made in all of 2022. Since the Capitol complex reopened after the pandemic, which shuttered the Capitol complex in 2021 and 2022, it has hosted a fuller regimen of the protests, rallies and press events that were less frequent during the peak of the COVID outbreak.
A Capitol Police official told CBS News many of the other arrests were made by officers who spotted guns while stopping people for other violations while driving across Capitol grounds.
“The recurring incidents of Capitol Police stopping loaded weapons from entering the Capitol complex are alarming,” said Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton, the congressional representative for Capitol Hill and Washington, D.C., where gun laws are stricter than the home states of some of those arrested for carrying. Norton said, “Because the Capitol complex is located in D.C., D.C.’s gun laws will necessarily affect the number of these incidents.”
In the recent wave of arrests, the people from whom the guns are seized faced the same criminal charge, a felony count of carrying a pistol without a license. The cases are being prosecuted in the Superior Court for the District of Columbia. But overall, these were cases that appear largely, if not exclusively, to be issues of human error. CBS News has not seen a Capitol Hill gun case filed this year in federal court, which would be the venue handling larger-scale incidents.
Though firearms seizures have been a recurring issue on Capitol Hill, concern about safety and protection of members of Congress has increased in recent years. Multiple defendants in the U.S. Capitol siege admitted — or were convicted — of carrying firearms. Others were accused of targeting specific members of Congress for violence.
In a series of recent violent incidents, attackers have assaulted a Minnesota congresswoman, a top aide to a Virginia congressman, a U.S. Senate aide and a U.S. House aide leaving a congressional baseball game.
