The Justice Department announced Wednesday that it had filed lawsuits against Virginia and California, alleging unconstitutional restrictions on sales of certain types of guns.
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said that "the Constitution is not a suggestion" and that "the Second Amendment is a sacred right belonging to all Americans, even those in California."
In Virginia, the department is targeting a law that banned the sale of automatic weapons and filed suit against both the state and the state police, alleging the law "unconstitutionally bans the purchase and sale of ordinary semi-automatic rifles owned by millions of Americans" and saying "The Virginia law makes the commercial purchase of AR-15-style rifles a crime."
In California, the suit challenges a newly enacted law that restricts the sale of some firearms with a trigger that could be modified into a "machinegun-convertible pistol," and the department noted that the California law went into effect on July 1.
The department said in a separate news release that its suit against California seeks to halt the state's Glock ban and prevent enforcement of California's "Handgun Roster," which limits what legal firearms can be legally purchased, and the department characterized both the ban and the roster as unlawful.
The complaint against California was filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, and the Justice Department sought an order to block a law that limits where most Glock and Glock-style pistols can be sold just hours after the law took effect.
The California law at issue is Assembly Bill 1127, which does not explicitly name the Glock brand but targets any handgun with a specific mechanism that can be converted by a black market device commonly called a "Glock switch," the department said. Blanche said the policies "trample" the rights of law-abiding Californians.
The complaint describes those conversion devices as capable of turning semiautomatic handguns into weapons that can fire about 20 rounds per second, and says advances in 3D printing have made the devices widely available and cheap to produce. Federal authorities reported recovering 11,088 such devices from crime scenes between 2019 and 2023, and the devices have been used in several mass shootings, including a 2022 attack in Sacramento that resulted in six deaths and 12 injuries.
The new law does not prohibit possession of affected handguns already owned by Californians and includes exemptions for gun dealers as well as law enforcement and military agencies. Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the bill in October, and a spokesperson for the governor, Diana Crofts-Pelayo, said, "The Trump administration is once again trying to dismantle California’s commonsense gun safety laws" and "Our response is simple — these laws save lives."
The Justice Department argues in its complaint that California cannot ban legal semiautomatic handguns simply because they could be illegally altered and compared the state's approach to banning ordinary shotguns because they can be illegally shortened. The lawsuit also challenges decades-old handgun roster requirements, noting that a federal judge tentatively blocked portions of those requirements in a separate 2023 case now on appeal to the 9th Circuit.
The federal complaint asks a judge to apply recent Supreme Court guidance in finding that California's restrictions violate the Second Amendment and seeks an order barring the state from enforcing them. The department said it is relying on a federal civil rights law often used against police departments, arguing that California Attorney General Rob Bonta and state Justice Department agents qualify as peace officers and therefore violate gun owners' rights when they enforce the handgun restrictions. Bonta is named in the suit; his office said it will review the complaint and respond as appropriate in court and added, "California’s gun safety laws helped drive firearm death rates to record lows in our state and are a blueprint for reducing gun violence nationwide."
The Supreme Court will consider in its next term whether the Second Amendment guarantees the right to have AR-15-style rifles and will hear two cases challenging local and state laws outlawing AR-15s and similar semi-automatic rifles, one involving an ordinance in Cook County, Illinois, and the other centering on a Connecticut law.
In two separate rulings last month, the Supreme Court struck down a law in Hawaii that restricted guns on private property that is open to the public and sided with a Texas man who challenged the federal ban that barred certain drug users from having firearms.