Here’s a scenario that should make every gun owner’s blood boil. A 22-year-old Oklahoma National Guard member, sent to Washington, D.C., to support President Trump’s crime-fighting effort, now finds himself facing charges. His alleged offense? Carrying a firearm.
What Happened
The Associated Press reports that Spec. Jakob Noonan was arrested Monday, September 29, after U.S. Park Police found a handgun during a traffic stop. Noonan was riding with a fellow Guard member in a Honda SUV when officers pulled the vehicle over for an expired tag.
According to a U.S. Park Police statement, the officer noticed an empty holster in the back of the vehicle and asked whether a firearm was present. Noonan confirmed there was. At the time, he was off duty, out of uniform, and driving his personal vehicle. He told the officer the firearm was registered in Oklahoma — an open-carry, permitless-carry state — and that he was temporarily living in the capital as part of the National Guard operation. A records check confirmed he had no valid District of Columbia concealed-carry permit.
Noonan was charged with carrying a pistol without a license and had his first court appearance in D.C. Superior Court the same day. Notably, his arrest marks the second time in two months that a member of the task force has been arrested — the deployment itself has been contentious since Trump launched it in August 2025 under an emergency crime declaration.
A Joint Task Force-District of Columbia spokesperson told Task & Purpose on Saturday that it knew about the service member’s arrest.
“JTF-DC service members are expected to maintain high standards of professionalism and conduct at all times. This matter will be addressed in accordance with established policies and procedures,” the spokesperson said, pointing further questions toward the Metropolitan Police Department.
The Legal Absurdity
Here’s where it gets ridiculous. In his home state of Oklahoma, Noonan can legally carry without any permit. While he’s on the clock in D.C., he can lawfully carry a handgun or a service rifle. But to lawfully keep a gun in his personal vehicle in the District — one that isn’t locked up, unloaded, and inaccessible — he’d need a D.C. carry permit under the licensing scheme the D.C. Circuit struck down in Wrenn v. District of Columbia back in 2017, before the District rewrote it with new procedural barriers that are just as effective at keeping non-residents out.
Under D.C. statute, he faces a possible five-year prison term.
The question answers itself: does a man suddenly become a danger the moment his workday ends? Of course not. National reciprocity would resolve this absurdity: a lawful carrier shouldn’t become a felon by crossing a jurisdictional line, especially one the federal government ordered him to cross.
Pirro’s Pickle
U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro has backed herself into a corner. She’s said she wouldn’t go after D.C. residents for openly carrying rifles or running afoul of the District’s “large capacity” magazine ban.
But back in February she warned in a Fox News interview, “You bring a gun into this District, you mark my words, you’re going to jail. I don’t care if you have a license in another district, and I don’t care if you’re a law-abiding gun owner somewhere else.”
TTAG criticized those comments at the time, and Noonan’s case is exactly why. Pirro drew the hardest possible line against non-resident carry — no exceptions, no discretion, no case-by-case consideration — and now the test case is a Trump-deployed National Guardsman who was lawfully carrying under the laws of the state that sent him.
If she prosecutes Noonan, Second Amendment supporters will raise a stink, and rightly so. If she doesn’t, the left will cry double standard.
Either way, this case is exactly why gun owners took issue with her tough talk in the first place. A U.S. Attorney who publicly commits to prosecuting every outsider who carries into D.C., regardless of circumstance, has handed herself a political problem the moment one of those “outsiders” turns out to be sympathetic.
Here’s hoping Noonan’s attorneys mount a Second Amendment challenge to D.C.’s non-resident carry licensing scheme. The Supreme Court’s post-Bruen framework specifically protects public carry for self-defense, and the District’s effective denial of that right to residents of 49 other states — including an active-duty servicemember ordered to the capital on federal business — is exactly the kind of as-applied challenge the Bruen framework was built to resolve.