The U.S. Department of Justice is taking Virginia to court over its so-called “assault firearms” ban, filing a lawsuit just hours after it had been slated to take effect on July 1.
Gov. Abigail Spanberger, D-Va., signed a law that creates a Class 1 misdemeanor for importing, selling, manufacturing, purchasing, or transferring the firearms, which include standard, semi-automatic rifles like the AR-15-style rifle, the country’s most popular firearm.
Attorney General Todd Blanche’s office filed a lawsuit Wednesday morning saying the law violates the Second Amendment.
“The Constitution is not a suggestion, and the Second Amendment is not a second-class right,” Blanche said in a press release. “This Justice Department has done more to protect the Second Amendment than any administration in our nation’s history, and we will continue to do so whenever necessary.”
The lawsuit, filed in a Richmond federal court, does not address the standard-capacity magazine ban, limiting magazines to no more than 15 rounds. The normal amount for an AR-15 is 30 rounds.
The Department of Justice argues that the ban violates U.S. Supreme Court precedent set in NYSRPA v. Bruen, which requires that any firearm regulation meet a two-pronged test to be considered constitutional: If the plain text of the Second Amendment protects the citizen’s conduct, a regulation is presumably unconstitutional; and, a regulation can only be considered constitutional if it is “consistent with this Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.”
Since the historical record shows that citizens were able to keep firearms commonly in use at the time, and the AR-15s and other similar guns are some of the most commonly used today, they are almost always protected firearms, the lawsuit states.
“There is no historical tradition of banning arms in common use. Therefore, the Second Amendment protects the right of law-abiding Americans to possess and use weapons that are in common use for lawful purposes,” the lawsuit says. “The statute bans the purchase and sale of AR-15 style rifles. As set forth in this section, Americans own and use for lawful purposes tens of millions of AR-15 style rifles.”
The DOJ’s suit also makes clear that “common sense dictates that the right to bear arms requires a right to acquire arms, just as the right to free press necessarily includes the right to acquire a printing press, or the right to freely practice religion necessarily rests on a right to acquire a sacred text,” citing a 2025 case out of the 10th Circuit.
The lawsuit notes that even the law, by using the term “assault firearms,” is deploying “a rhetorically charged political term developed by anti-gun publicists.”
“‘Prior to 1989, the term assault weapon did not exist in the lexicon of firearms. It is a political term, developed by anti-gun publicists to expand the category of assault rifles so as to allow an attack on as many additional firearms as possible on the basis of undefined evil appearance,’” the lawsuit adds, quoting a 1997 law review article. “In the real world (as opposed to the fevered imaginations of some politicians), the rifles that the statute calls ‘assault firearms’ include ordinary semiautomatic rifles lawfully possessed and used by millions of law-abiding Americans.”
The action comes several weeks after Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon threatened a lawsuit. In the press release, Dhillon said, “I keep my promises,” adding, “Law-abiding Americans should not have to live under threat of criminal sanction for simply exercising their Second Amendment right to possess arms owned by millions of their fellow citizens.”
As The Federalist reported, there are numerous other lawsuits at the federal and state level that have come in to challenge both the “assault firearms” ban and the magazine capacity ban.
On Monday, a lawsuit filed by the National Rifle Association (NRA) achieved a statewide preliminary injunction on the gun and magazine bans in a state court in Washington County.
Another injunction against the enforcement of the bans was granted last week in Lancaster County as well.
Meanwhile, numerous Commonwealth Attorneys and county sheriffs have come out in defiance of the Spanberger government, saying they will not enforce or prosecute anyone under the new law.
“I am of the opinion that these laws are unconstitutional and cannot be enforced,” Page County Commonwealth’s Attorney Chapman L. Good Sr. wrote in a letter to Sheriff Chadwick Cubbage, explaining he will not be prosecuting under the bans. “The Second Amendment guarantees our [G]od given right to self-defense by ensuring that the right ‘to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.’ That Amendment also makes clear that a militia is ‘necessary to the security of a free State.'”
