Maryland & DC Rifle & Pistol Ass'n, Inc. v. Washington

• Citation: 442 F.2d 123
• Decision Date: 24 February 1971
• Docket Number: No. 22927.,22927.
• Parties: MARYLAND & DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA RIFLE AND PISTOL ASSOCIATION, INC., Appellant, v. Walter E. WASHINGTON et al.
• Court: United States Courts of Appeals. United States Court of Appeals (District of Columbia)

442 F.2d 123 (1971)

MARYLAND & DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA RIFLE AND PISTOL ASSOCIATION, INC., Appellant, v. Walter E. WASHINGTON et al.

No. 22927.

United States Court of Appeals, District of Columbia Circuit.

Argued March 3, 1970.

Decided February 24, 1971.

Mr. John T. Bonner, Washington, D. C., for appellant.

Mr. Richard W. Barton, Asst. Corporation Counsel for the District of Columbia, with whom Messrs. Hubert B. Pair, Acting Corporation Counsel at the time the brief was filed, and Leo N. Gorman, Asst. Corporation Counsel, were on the brief, for appellees.

Before McGOWAN, LEVENTHAL and ROBINSON, Circuit Judges.

SPOTTSWOOD W. ROBINSON, III, Circuit Judge:

The sole question on this appeal is whether the District of Columbia Council had authority to promulgate the gun control code embodied in Articles 50 to 55 of the current District of Columbia Police Regulations.¹ Asserting the negative of the issue, appellant, a nonprofit corporation suing on behalf of itself and its members, sought from the District Court a judgment declaring that the challenged regulations were ultra vires. Taking the affirmative are the appellees, the Commissioner of the District of Columbia and the members of the Council, in whom the executive and regulatory powers of the District Government reside.² On cross-motions for summary judgment, the District Court upheld the regulations as action within the realm of the council.³

The regulations under review pursue a comprehensive scheme of control over firearms kept or traded within the District. Briefly described, they require the registration of all pistols, rifles and shotguns possessed or transferred;⁴ the licensing of persons purchasing, keeping or carrying such weapons,⁵ and of dealers trafficking therein;⁶ and the satisfaction of conditions imposed upon the sale of ammunition.⁷ Some of the regulations are modeled after antecedent legislation for the District which, inter alia, bans the possession of pistols by certain persons and mandates licenses for others carrying pistols.⁸ It is the Council's power to prescribe the rest of the regulations that the controversy centers upon.⁹

Appellees claim authorization by Section 1-227 of the District of Columbia Code, which empowers the Council¹⁰ "to make and enforce all such usual and reasonable police regulations * * * as they may deem necessary for the regulation of firearms, projectiles, explosives, or weapons of any kind in the District of Columbia."¹¹ It was upon this section that the District Court rested its ruling sustaining the regulations.¹² Appellees contend alternatively that the requisite authority was conferred by Section 1-226 of the Code, which is a more general delegation of power to issue regulations deemed "necessary for the protection of lives, limbs, health, comfort and quiet of all persons and the protection of all property within the District of Columbia."¹³ Appellant, on the other hand, argues that no authorization could be derived from either of the sections, and that Congress has reserved the field of weapons control solely to itself. We find, as did the District Court, ample warrant in Section 1-227 for adoption of the regulations, and thus have no occasion to consider the reach of Section 1-226.¹⁴

I

As enacted, Section 1-227 was the fourth of six sections in the 1906 "Act To prohibit the killing of wild birds and wild animals in the District of Columbia."¹⁵ Because the other five sections were concerned only with the protection of wildlife, appellant argues that Congress, by placing Section 4 in this context, intended that the power it conferred to regulate firearms was to be exercised only in relation to the hunting of wildlife. In our view, however, both the language of the statute and its subsequent treatment by Congress negate such a restricted interpretation.

The first and perhaps most important indication of congressional intent springs from the words in which the statute is cast. They are comprehensive and unequivocal; they contain no limiting reference to wildlife. They commission "all * * * usual and reasonable police regulations * * * necessary for the regulation of firearms, projectiles, explosives, or weapons of any kind in the District of Columbia."¹⁶ Absent strong reason for a contrary reading, our function is to take this language for what it plainly says, for "there is * * * no more persuasive evidence of the purpose of a statute than the words by which the legislature undertook to give expression to its wishes."¹⁷

We realize, of course, that "courts in the interpretation of a statute have some scope for adopting a restricted rather than a literal or usual meaning of its words where acceptance of that meaning would lead to absurd results, * * * or would thwart the obvious purpose of the statute * * *."¹⁸ But we recognize, on the other hand, that "courts are not free to reject that meaning where no such consequences follow and where * * * it appears to be consonant with the purposes of the act as declared by Congress and plainly disclosed by its structure."¹⁹ Nothing we discern in the case at bar persuades us to mistrust the ordinary meaning of the statutory language as the key to legislative intent.

Close adherence to normal usage of the statutory words is especially important where, as here, a contrary approach would narrow the operation of a statute written in general and expansive terms.²⁰ An intention to whittle down a law broadly written is hardly to be inferred where a natural construction is neither ludicrous nor obviously contrary to the statutory objective.²¹ We perceive no absurdity in a grant of authority to the District to regulate firearms for the protection of its people as well as its wildlife. And the legislative history of the 1906 act, from the fourth section of which Section 1-227 emanated, does not disclose a congressional purpose to confine it to wildlife conservation exclusively. On the contrary, it furnishes positive evidence that a wider goal was set for the act as a whole.

The bill which became the 1906 statute was prepared by the District Commissioners and introduced at their request.²² The report of the House Committee on the District of Columbia, which its counterpart in the Senate adopted in toto,²³ included a letter from the president of the Board of Commissioners listing among three specified objects of the legislation "the discharge of firearms."²⁴ The Committee, supporting its recommendation for passage of the bill, pointed out that "the advantage to be gained in the freedom from accident from indiscriminate discharge of firearms within the territory of the District of Columbia will safeguard human life and property to a large degree, which is now impossible."²⁵ Of the six provisions of the 1906 act, only Section 4 — now Section 1-227 — could have served the additional purpose of sparing the District's citizenry as well as its wildlife. Manifestly, the wider aim for the statute as a whole could be realized only by assigning the wider function to Section 4.

An expanded mission for Section 1-227 is also indicated by its cross-reference to other legislation enabling the District Government to regulate comprehensively for the protection of person and property. Like its forerunner, Section 4 of the 1906 act, but unlike any other provision of the act, Section 1-227 in terms supplements Sections 1-224 and 1-226.²⁶ Section 1-224 confers municipal authority over eight variegated areas; Section 1-226, also supplementing Section 1-224, broadly authorizes police regulations for the protection of life, health and property.²⁷ Neither of the latter two sections reflects a congressional inclination to confine the granted powers within limits narrower than those naturally connoted by the authorized topic of regulation. Section 1-227 thus joins Sections 1-224 and 1-226, and many others as well,²⁸ in the vast network of the District Government's regulatory powers. On the other hand, the remaining sections of the 1906 act have nothing to do with the scheme of municipal government; they relate only to wildlife preservation.²⁹

We are mindful that in 1906 the general public would have gained some measure of personal protection merely from the regulation of firearms in the hands of those who hunted wildlife, but we think Congress, in writing Section 4 into the 1906 act, had considerably more in mind. The dangers Congress wished to avert could not, even in 1906, be attributed to hunting alone, and we are unwilling to assume that legislators sensitive to the problem sought only an incomplete solution. This, we are convinced, is the more unlikely when we again consult the language by which Congress chose to express the delegation of regulatory authority. Not only, as we have said, was the grant broad and unambiguous,³⁰ but it went beyond the exigencies of controlling firearms use by hunters. The delegated power was for regulation not only "of firearms" and "projectiles," but more importantly of "explosives" and "weapons of any kind."³¹ These words unquestionably embrace more than the hunters usual paraphernalia.

Moreover, the subsequent congressional treatment of Section 1-227 further strengthens the propriety of the more extensive role it was destined to play. In 1932, Congress enacted a limited gun control law for the District,³² repealing its own 1892 enactment on the subject³³ but leaving Section 1-227 untouched.³⁴ Again, in 1958, in the course of passing a new wildlife statute for the Nation as a whole, Congress repealed Sections 1, 2, 3 and 5 of the 1906 act but left section 4 — the present Section 1-227 — intact.³⁵ Plainly, in each instance, Congress regarded Section 1-227 as an independent provision of the 1906 act, devoted to broader considerations than those underlying its own statutes.³⁶ Just as plainly, by divorcing Section 1-227 from wildlife legislation and leaving it available for other local needs, Congress fixed once and for all the objective it was to serve. L...