A group that advocates for gay Americans to carry firearms says its Tuesday victory in federal court against a restrictive concealed carry law in the nation’s capital is a twofold win for their cause.

Pink Pistols leader Gwen Patton says U.S. District Judge Richard Leon handed the group not only a win with real-world effects but fantastic free publicity for its mission.

Leon issued a preliminary injunction against the city’s requirement that residents supply a specific “good reason” – generalized fear of crime doesn’t cut it – to acquire a license to carry a gun, finding that requirement is likely unconstitutional.

The judge did not stay his injunction, meaning a lower standard for reviewing license applications is in place unless either Leon or the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit presses pause as the lawsuit continues.

But so long as the injunction stands, Patton believes it could have a deterrent effect.

“It’s been almost an automatic assumption that gay people won’t fight back, that they’re passive, they’re weak,” she says. “We’re putting it out there that you don’t know which of the gay people out there are armed. ... Don’t attack gay people because that could be a really bad decision.”

Federal data from 2014 reveals that perceived sexual orientation is as likely as religion to motivate an alleged hate crime.

Pink Pistols was founded in 2000 and has many chapters across the country. Patton, a lesbian who lives in Pennsylvania, says there have been successes, including the education a Philadelphia member provided a group of pipe-carrying men following him.

“One of them shouted, ‘Hey, faggot,’ and he turned around and pointed a .38 revolver at them. They dropped their pipes and ran,” she says. “This was the perfect case. He didn’t get hurt, they didn’t get hurt, and they learned a lesson that not every gay person is harmless.”

The nation's capital hasn't issued many concealed carry licenses since it began doing so in late 2014 for the first time in more than four decades.

Only 74 licenses have been issued in the more than 650,000-resident city, says Alice Kim, a spokeswoman for the city’s Metropolitan Police Department. The department received eight applications last week, and Kim says officials approved two and rejected one.

The lower standard for review will be in place until Leon either stays his ruling pending appeal or, perhaps more likely, the D.C. Circuit appeals court does it when he declines. A similar window existed last year when a still-pending lawsuit brought by D.C. residents won a preliminary injunction after they were denied licenses.

The D.C. Circuit stayed the preliminary injunction by U.S. District Judge Frederick Scullin last year. That case still is pending and was reassigned to another judge, Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, who in March declined to issue a preliminary injunction.

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"Essentially we've had three rulings by three different federal judges on the same legal issue, and two have gone against us and one has gone for us," says Rob Marus, a spokesman for D.C.'s Office of the Attorney General.

The city once called the nation’s "murder capital" historically has had strict gun restrictions. But the rapidly gentrifying municipality recently has had difficulty defending them against Second Amendment challenges, notably including the Supreme Court’s 2008 ruling in District of Columbia v. Heller that a near-total ban on handguns was unconstitutional.

The D.C. Council passed legislation allowing for concealed carry licenses in 2014 after an earlier unfavorable ruling by Judge Scullin. The law kneecapped the lawsuit, and city leaders chose to implement stringent rules that include requiring proof of a specific need.

“It’s enumerated in the law what kinds of things are considered ‘good reasons’ and you have to produce evidence to support the fact that you have this good reason,” Marus says of the challenged requirement. “You have to produce some documentations supporting your contention.”

The local resident in the Pink Pistols case, Matthew Grace, is married to a woman and contends they have a right to carry guns without subjective analysis of need. Patton says the couple are the only Pink Pistol members in the area, but that it’s not unusual for heterosexual people to be members or even found chapters.

Patton says she’s not sure why Grace approached her group, prompting the lawsuit. He and the group are co-plaintiffs in the case, and their lawyer, Charles Cooper, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Marus says the D.C. attorney general’s office will be appealing the case and anticipates ultimate victory, given rulings by three appeals courts – the New York-based 2nd Circuit, the Philadelphia-based 3rd Circuit and the Richmond-based 4th Circuit – that upheld state laws requiring justification for concealed carry permits, though Chicago's 7th Circuit in 2012 lurched the other way, knocking down a highly restrictive concealed carry law.

The legal fight and what it may mean for gay people is viewed with some ambivalence by Jimmy LaSalvia, who in 2011 in the nation’s capital was knocked off his bike with a punch from a teenager who called him a “faggot.” The teen and his friends dispersed when a member of the group saw LaSalvia reach into his bag and said, “Does he have a gun?”

“I didn’t have a gun, but the kids who punched me weren’t sure if I did or not, and that was enough to disperse them and to stop the situation from escalating,” he recalls. "There is a deterrence factor in there."

LaSalvia, a communications strategist who then led a conservative group called GOProud, says he considered carrying a gun after the incident but chose instead to carry pepper spray when he weighed the potential pitfalls of theft or accidental use against likely need.

“I determined having a loaded weapon with me all the time was too dangerous,” says LaSalvia, who recently left the Republican Party and authored the book “No Hope” about his political views.