DOJ Sues U.S. Virgin Islands Over Gun Permits

The Department of Justice’s new Second Amendment Section of the Civil Rights Division has taken its first official act to defend the right of the people to keep and bear arms, and the section’s attorneys are taking aim at the gun licensing regime in the territory of the U.S. Virgin Islands. 

Justice Department Sues the Virgin Islands Police Department for Unconstitutional Practices Resulting in Effective Denials of Gun Permits

“This Civil Rights Division will protect the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens,” said @AAGDhillon. “The newly-established… pic.twitter.com/ai8M1t7Fqh

— DOJ Civil Rights Division (@CivilRights) December 16, 2025

In its complaint, the DOJ lays out a number of issues with the licensing regime, including the “systematic practice by all three VI Defendants of requiring applicants to consent to unreasonable warrantless searches of their homes and to spend money to purchase and install safes” in order to obtain a firearms license. 

The complaint also alleges that applications for a gun license may be stuck in a bureaucratic limbo for a year or more, which DOJ contends runs afoul of the Bruen decision’s caution that even “shall issue” regimes can be unconstitutional if they subject applicants to unduly long wait times. 

Additionally, the DOJ lawsuit contends that the

The USVI statute that limits permits to carry concealed weapons only to individuals who “establish to the satisfaction of the Commissioner that” they have a “proper reason for carrying a firearm,” 23 V.I.C. § 454(3), is indistinguishable from the New York statute held unconstitutional in Bruen. 

… The Virgin Islands Code requires an applicant’s “good moral character” forissuance of a firearm license but does not establish any specific standard for its “good moral character” requirement. Nor does the statute define it. See 23 V.I.C. § 456(a). The statute, however, permits denial of a license whenever a “proper reason exists to deny such application,” but does not define what may constitute such “proper reason.”

USVI law generally denies private individuals the right to carry a firearm unless such a person “established to the satisfaction of the Commissioner [of VIPD] that he has good reason to fear death or great injury to his person or property, or … any other proper reason for carrying a firearm, and the circumstances of the case, established by affidavit of the applicant and of at least two credible persons, demonstrate the need for such license.” 

Each license issued to an individual who has satisfied the requirements of the statute applies to a specific firearm, and additional licenses must be obtained for each additional firearm that an individual wishes to possess. See 23 V.I.C. § 457(a)(5) (specifying that each license must have a “[d]escription of the firearm authorized to be carried, showing the serial number, if any.”). Each gun so licensed must be annually inspected by VIPD.

… The systematic practice by VI Defendants of conditioning a permit for concealed carry of a firearm upon the applicant’s showing of a “proper reason” has deprived, and continues to deprive, law-abiding citizens who applied for a new license to possess or carry a firearm of their Second Amendment rights.

I confess that I didn’t have the U.S. Virgin Islands high up on my list of prospective cases for the Second Amendment Section’s first litigation, but given the abuses outlined in the complaint it’s a logical place to start. Many of the hoops and hurdles would-be gun owners are required to navigate are clearly off-limits under the Bruen decision, and the injunctive relief the DOJ is seeking would put an immediate end to those abusive practices. 

There are still plenty of other anti-gun jurisdictions that need attention, but the lawsuit against the U.S. Virgin Islands government and its police department is an outstanding debut for the Civil Rights Division’s Second Amendment Section; not only for the abuses its taking on, but because it puts the gun control lobby in the position of having to defend indefensible positions like requiring gun owners to submit to warrantless searches in order to exercise a fundamental civil right. I’m interested in hearing the USVI’s defense of these laws, but I’m even more curious to see what, if anything, groups like Giffords and Everytown have to say about the litigation. 

Editor’s Note: The radical left will stop at nothing to enact their radical gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights.

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