DOJ Civil Rights Division chief Harmeet K. Dhillon and the Division’s Second Amendment Section have officially filed suit against the commonwealth of Virginia over its ban on AR-15s and other commonly-owned firearms and magazines that takes effect today.
Y’all! @AAGDhillon just sued the state of Virginia over their gun ban!!! pic.twitter.com/TZGREVK7Uk
— Hannah Hill (@hannahhill_sc) July 1, 2026
You can read a copy of the complaint here.
As a Virginia resident I’m thrilled to see this development, and I’m glad that the litigation is seeking both a temporary and permanent injunction barring the state and its political subdivisions from enforcing the ban while the lawsuit proceeds. Given that the Supreme Court has agreed to address a similar ban in Cook County, Illinois next term, the federal courts should grant DOJ’s injunction and preserve Virginians’ Second Amendment rights as soon as possible.
Another major gun control law is now being enforced in California: the ban on the sale of Glocks and other striker-fired pistols that can be illegally modified to fire full-auto through the installation of a “switch.”
Dhillon recently sent a letter to California Attorney General Rob Bonta and Gov. Gavin Newsom weeks ago warning that a lawsuit was coming unless the state agreed to suspend enforcement of the new law. On Tuesday, Bonta responded with a letter essentially telling Dhillon to pound sand, proclaiming that the California Department of Justice “will not agree to those demands.”
Dhillon’s response, delivered on X, was short and sweet.
See y’all in court! 🤨 pic.twitter.com/vCQVbIMeEy
— AAGHarmeetDhillon (@AAGDhillon) June 30, 2026
Oddly, though Bonta’s office blasted out nearly a dozen press releases on Tuesday, none of them were about Bonta’s decision to defy the Justice Department and begin enforcement of the Glock ban.
Bonta’s letter to Dhillon also contains an oddity, or at least a really bad argument. The California attorney general wrote that the new law, and the Handgun Safety Act more broadly, are “commonsense handgun design safety laws that help to prevent accidental discharges by experienced and non-experienced shooters alike and the conversion of semi-automatic pistols into deadly automatic firing weapons.”
If these laws are really aimed at both new and experienced shooters and are meant for their own safety, then why is law enforcement not subject to the provisions of either the Handgun Safety Act or the Glock Ban (also known as Penal Code Section 27595)? If the California law is really meant to protect Californians, shouldn’t police officers be “protected” too?
Dhillon dropped another post on X this morning hinting that the lawsuit against California could be filed today.
Good morning 🇺🇸! Fixing to drop some lawsuits onto the docket today! Watch this space!
— AAGHarmeetDhillon (@AAGDhillon) July 1, 2026
The DOJ’s lawsuit may have already been filed, but I haven’t seen a copy yet.
***UPDATED***
The lawsuit has indeed been filed, and the complaint can be found here.
As expected, the argument in the Glock ban argument is pretty straightforward: Glocks and other striker-fired pistols are in common use for lawful purposes, and therefore cannot be banned without violating the Second Amendment. Efforts to enforce the law will demonstrate a pattern and practice of violating the Second Amendment rights of California residents, which itself is a violation of 34 U.S.C. § 12601(a). But the DOJ litigation isn’t limited solely to the ban on Glocks. Instead, it challenges the entirety of the state’s Unsafe Handgun Act, which requires every semi-automatic handgun sold by FFLs in the state to be approved by CalDOJ and come with features like a loaded chamber indicator and a magazine disconnect safety.
In 2023, a federal judge held that the State was “unable to show the UHA’s chamber load indicator, magazine disconnect mechanism, and microstamping requirements are consistent with the Nation’s historical arms regulations,” but the Renna and Boland cases have been in a holding pattern for almost three years, after oral arguments on whether to keep the lower court injunction in place were held at the Ninth Circuit in August, 2023.
Bonta has already telegraphed his defense of the law, which is that the statute really isn’t a ban at all, but a safety requirement put in place by the state of California designed to stop the illegal conversion of semi-automatic pistols into machine guns. The problem with that is twofold: first, the state is allowing some residents to continue purchasing these firearms, and both the state and federal government have already banned the device that illegally converts semi-autos into full-auto.
I don’t know if a DOJ lawsuit will do anything to speed up the glacial pace of the Ninth Circuit’s opinion-making, but it’s great to see Dhillon and her team are hauling California and Virginia into courtrooms over their bans on some of the most popular firearms in the country.
Read the full article here
