Members of Congress can keep firearms in their offices, Capitol Police say

A Republican congressman who brought an AR-15 rifle to his Capitol Hill office did so legally even though it’s illegal for most people to carry a firearm under Washington, D.C.’s strict gun laws, police say.

Last week, Colorado Rep. Ken Buck of himself and Rep. Trey Gowdy posing with the American-flag-painted assault rifle.

Buck told the Washington Post that he received clearance from authorities to transport the firearm from his home state to his office on Capitol Hill.

“I went to Capitol Hill police,” Buck said. “They went to the D.C. police, [and] they got permission for me to transport it into the District. I went to TSA, and followed all of the regulations in getting it onto the plane and getting it here.”

On Tuesday, the D.C. attorney general’s office referred the matter to the city’s Metropolitan Police Department to investigate, according to Reuters. A spokesman for that department referred questions to the U.S. Capitol Police.

While the public is prohibited from carrying firearms on Capitol Grounds, Capitol Police spokeswoman Kimberly Schneider told Yahoo News that members of Congress may keep firearms in their office, and may transport them, too — as long as they’re unloaded.

“Members of Congress may maintain firearms within the confines of their office,” Schneider said, “and they and any employee or agent of any member of Congress may transport within the Capitol Grounds firearms unloaded and securely wrapped.”

But according to the same provision, no one “shall carry any firearm inside the chamber or on the floor of either House, in any lobby or cloakroom adjacent thereto, in the galleries of either House or in the Marble Room of the Senate or Rayburn Room of the House unless assigned or approved by the two Sergeants of Arms for maintenance of adequate security.”

According to Buck, his gun — which hangs above a Second Amendment flag in his office — was unloaded, has a trigger lock and had its bolt carrier assembly removed before he brought it to Washington.

“Putting a trigger lock on an inoperable gun is like putting a chastity belt on a eunuch,” Buck told the paper. “The only dangerous thing about that gun is if someone took it off the wall and hit somebody else over the head with it.”

Buck isn’t the first person to test the District of Columbia’s restrictive gun laws in the name of the Second Amendment.

In 2013, Adam Kokesh, a libertarian activist, videotaped himself loading a shotgun in Washington’s Freedom Plaza.