An Oklahoma National Guard specialist deployed to Washington under President Trump’s crime emergency order was arrested for carrying a pistol without a license, the second task force member charged in two months.
Spec. Jakob Noonan, 22, was off duty, out of uniform, and driving his personal Honda SUV when U.S. Park Police stopped the vehicle for an expired tag. A fellow Guard member rode with him. Officers spotted an empty holster in the rear of the vehicle, asked about a firearm, and Noonan confirmed one was inside.
Responding officers found the pistol. A records check showed he held no valid District of Columbia concealed-carry permit. He was arrested Monday and charged with carrying a pistol without a license. He made his first appearance in D.C. Superior Court on Sept. 29.
Military.com reported that Noonan told authorities he was temporarily living in the capital as part of the National Guard operation. He said Oklahoma is an open-carry state and that the firearm was registered to him there. He acknowledged he lacked a D.C. permit.
His court-appointed attorney did not return a call to the main number or immediately answer an email. The Joint Task Force overseeing the deployment did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
This marked the second time in two months a member of the task force has been arrested. In August, Georgia National Guard member Zion Mitchell was arrested and later charged after he allegedly pulled a gun on a fellow Guard member in an apparent dispute over regulation haircuts, a case covered in earlier reporting on a National Guardsman on D.C. crime patrol.
Park Police stated Noonan was off duty and in his personal vehicle at the time of the stop. The empty holster drew the officer’s attention; the confirmation and the visible pistol followed. The charge rests on D.C.’s licensing rules, not on any claim that the gun was fired or brandished during the stop.
President Trump launched the deployment in August 2025 with an emergency order over what he said was out-of-control crime in the nation’s capital. Guard members have supported law enforcement in arrest operations and taken on beautification projects and snow removal.
Over the summer more than 5,000 troops were in Washington during celebrations for America’s 250th anniversary. The number has since been scaled down to around 3,000. The deployment has been extended until January 2029.
Noonan’s explanation was straightforward: he came from an open-carry state, the pistol was registered to him in Oklahoma, and he was living temporarily in D.C. for the mission. D.C. law still required a local concealed-carry permit he did not have. The records check confirmed it.
That gap sits at the center of the case. A soldier sent to help restore order in a high-crime city carried a firearm legal in his home state and registered to him, then faced arrest under the District’s tighter rules while off duty in his own vehicle. The stop began with an expired tag, not a violent crime.
Trump has defended the Guard’s role against critics who downplay its effect on street crime, including in a separate fight detailed when Trump sues Center for American Progress over a report dismissing the deployment’s impact. The mission continues. The licensing clash does not erase the reason the troops were ordered in.
No injuries or property damage were reported in connection with Noonan’s arrest. The fellow Guard member in the SUV was not described as charged. Case numbers, the pistol’s make and model, and any next court date past the Sept. 29 appearance were not detailed in the available charging account.
Two arrests in two months do not define an entire force of thousands. They do show that individual misconduct and individual legal mistakes still surface even when the broader mission is lawful order and visible support for police. Mitchell’s alleged dispute over haircuts was one kind of failure. Noonan’s unlicensed pistol in a personal vehicle was another.
High-profile arrests elsewhere keep reminding readers that personal conduct still collides with the law, whether the defendant is a Sinema ex-bodyguard arrested after a destructive home incident or a Guardsman on a federal task force. Accountability does not pause for the uniform or the mission patch.
D.C.’s gun rules remain among the strictest in the country. Oklahoma’s open-carry culture is not. Guardsmen rotating through the capital live in that mismatch every day they are off duty and still carry the habits of home. The charging papers treat the absence of a D.C. permit as decisive. That is the statute as written.
Voters who backed a stronger federal response to disorder in Washington expected troops to back police, not to create their own booking photos. The deployment’s extension into 2029 shows the White House still sees the need. Separate federal cases, including a Peruvian national arrested in a voting probe, underline that enforcement pressure is not limited to one city or one statute.
Noonan is 22. He is a specialist, not a commander. His statements track a young soldier who treated a registered Oklahoma firearm as routine and ran into a local licensing wall. The Park Police did their job on the expired tag and the holster in plain view. The court will handle the charge.
The larger mission was never a promise that every Guardsman would be perfect. It was a decision that out-of-control crime in the capital required more than the status quo. Two arrests supply facts for discipline and for clearer briefings on D.C. gun rules. They do not revise the emergency that put the troops there.
Order in the capital still matters more than any single booking. Troops who break local gun rules should face the charge; the city that needed them should not pretend the underlying crime problem has vanished.
