The Justice Department sued Virginia on Wednesday to try to block state Democrats’ new law banning the sale and purchase of so-called assault weapons, including some of the most popular semiautomatic rifles.
Separately, the department sued California over its ban on most Glock-style pistols and its new handgun roster, which further limits the types of guns that can be bought in the state.
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said both states are violating their residents’ Second Amendment rights.
The Justice Department was particularly critical of Virginia’s law, calling it an affront to the state’s history in helping secure the Bill of Rights, which includes the Second Amendment.
“Virginians can be justly proud of their centuries-long tradition of leadership in the cause of liberty. Sadly, however, that tradition was recently besmirched by the Virginia legislature’s enactment of SB749, a statute that infringes law-abiding Virginians’ fundamental right to keep and bear arms and thus violates the Second Amendment,” DOJ said in its lawsuit.
The law was supposed to take effect this week but has been partially blocked by state judges. The DOJ lawsuit opens a new front in federal court.
DOJ said the state law purports to outlaw sales of “assault firearms,” though the definition is broad enough to include guns in common circulation and owned by millions of Americans already.
The Supreme Court on Tuesday said it would hear challenges to similar laws in Connecticut and Cook County, Illinois.
In California, the feds are taking aim at a law DOJ said bans sales of “virtually all Glock and Glock-style pistols.”
“California’s ban on the sale of the most popular handgun in America obviously violates the Second Amendment,” the federal lawsuit said.
The state’s handgun roster also requires that all handguns sold in the state have a magazine safety, which would prevent a magazine-fed handgun from firing if the magazine is detached.
The state attorney general’s office said California’s strict approach to guns has pushed firearms deaths “to record lows.”
“Our office is committed to defending California’s effective and constitutional gun safety laws, including laws that protect the public from the proliferation of machine guns and from unsafe handguns that have not passed consumer safety and testing requirements,” the office said.
The Supreme Court in its 2022 Bruen decision breathed new life into the Second Amendment, saying that for restrictions to survive constitutional scrutiny, they must be the sort of limits that would have been countenanced in the founding era.
That set off a new round of challenges to laws restricting who can possess a gun, where they can be carried and what sorts of weapons can be restricted.
Wednesday’s two lawsuits fall into that latter category.
