DC National Guard members actively training to carry pistols in capitol mission

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The DC National Guard is making sure all members have the requisite training to use a specific type of pistol should the official order to be armed come down from Trump or his Department of Defense, The Handbasket is the first to report. The fact that members may soon be armed was reported earlier by The Wall Street Journal and NPR, but this new information sheds light on the fact that members are actively preparing to be armed.

As recently as Thursday, the US Army wrote in a press release: “Weapons are available if needed but will remain in the armory.” Yet by Friday, according to the WSJ, some members “were told to expect an order to carry weapons.” The Army did not respond to the paper’s request for comment. However, according to documents and messages reviewed by The Handbasket, the wheels are already in motion.

According to two people familiar with the situation and whose identities are being kept anonymous for their safety, members of the DC National Guard task force assigned to patrol the streets of the nation’s capitol are qualifying—military speak for meeting training requirements—to carry and operate M-17 pistols. The M-17 is the military variant of the Sig Sauer P320 semi-automatic pistol, a controversial firearm that has been banned by multiple law enforcement agencies (including ICE) for reportedly firing without a trigger pull. 

In the past 24 hours or so, DC Guard members have begun to be pulled off mission duty in order to go to the shooting range and practice with the M-17 pistols, messages from leadership show. It is unclear why the M-17 is the DC Guard’s weapon of choice. A message The Handbasket sent to the guard’s Public Affairs Office Monday evening asking for more context around the decision has not received a response. 

One of my sources confirmed that an official order to arm the guard members still hadn’t gone out as of Tuesday morning. 

Lindsay P. Cohn, a Visiting Professor at Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs who spoke to me on her own behalf, speculated that the M-17 may have been chosen as a compromise to arm the guard while making the optics “less aggressive.”

“Most National Guard leadership really want to keep their presence as de-escalatory and non-confrontational as possible,” Cohn told The Handbasket on Monday. “So not being armed would probably have been their initial call. Having them armed indicates either a concern for their physical safety or a desire to make them more intimidating (or both.)”

She added: “The pistol is not the standard service weapon, but it can be considered more appropriate for law enforcement missions than the rifle.” 

It should go without saying that bringing additional firearms into an already violent environment will only beget more violence. We’ve already seen that Black and Brown DC residents are experiencing a majority of law enforcement abuse, with the violent beating and arrest of a delivery worker from Venezuela by ICE on Saturday caught on camera. 

“This is not safety. This is state-sponsored intimidation,” Eduardo Zelaya, Organizing Director for the immigrants’ rights organization CASA, wrote in a statement late last week. “From ICE raids to militarized patrols, this is an orchestrated campaign to terrorize our families. We will not stand by as our people are harassed, abducted, and pushed from the streets of the city we call home. These actions also hurt our economy by driving workers into the shadows and disrupting local businesses.”

Monday morning, ICE agents chased a pair of men in a white landscaping truck down a residential street in Takoma Park, Maryland, just a mile from the DC border. In footage and testimony shared directly by witnesses with The Handbasket, the truck crashed on a residents’ front lawn, the men exited the vehicle, and ICE agents chased them through the backyards of multiple homes until they hunted them down and arrested them.

While one resident filmed the arrest and demanded the agents show their faces which were hidden under masks, one shot back “Ma’am, do you really want to defend El Salvadoran gang members?” There is absolutely zero evidence these men are affiliated with any gang.

DC needs a lot of things, like housing and food for the people who lack them, and an opposition party stepping in to stop the violent and unlawful arrests of immigrants and citizens of color. What it certainly doesn’t need is more guns.