LAWYER: DOJ Says AR-15 Bans Are FINISHED After These 5 Lawsuits

Ajouté : 2026-05-20

[00:00:09]Alex, I'm gonna say what is the number five? What's the question? The question is this. Since September of 2025, how many federal government lawsuits from Trump's Department of Justice have been filed in support of the Second Amendment against gun control jurisdictions across the country? Five times. Most people following gun news have heard about one or two of them. The full picture is something else entirely and it points to exactly what is going on next in the Supreme Court. I hope so. Folks, let's get into it.

[00:00:48]17 years ago, the Supreme Court told the District of Columbia, that's Washington DC, that its handgun ban was unconstitutional. That's the 2008 case DC versus Heler. 17 years later, the same city was still blocking law-abiding residents from registering the most popular rifle in America. We're talking about the AR-15. Last December, about 6 months ago, the Department of Justice had enough. They sued. The lawsuit, United States versus District of Columbia, was filed by the DOJ's newly created Second Amendment section inside the Civil Rights Division. This is not a private organization like the fantastic ones out there doing the Lord's work.

[00:01:25]Gun Owners of America, Second Amendment Foundation, Firearms Policy Coalition, National Association for Gun Rights, and others. You name it. This is not a gun rights foundation. This is the federal government. Finally, our tax dollars fighting for us, not against us, treating the Second Amendment as a civil right worth enforcing, not a secondass right worth trampling on. That distinction matters more than all too many people realize. Here's the core of the DC case. DC law requires any firearm to be registered with the Metro Police before it can be legally possessed in the district. In other words, no registration, no legal possession. Some will say, not me, that sounds reasonable enough. But the Metro Police had a pattern in practice of refusing to register any semi-automatic rifle, including AR-15s. That means that a law-abiding DC resident who wanted to own the most popular rifle in the country could not do so without breaking the law. The DOJ called that what it is, an unconstitutional ban. This fight should have been over in 2008. Why?

[00:02:35]Because the United States Supreme Court's decision in the case DC versus Heler established clearly that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to keep and possess commonlyowned firearms for lawful purposes, including self-defense. The case was brought by a DC special policeman named Richard Heler, who I've had the honor and privilege of meeting on any number of occasions at this point, who could not keep a handgun in his own home. The court struck that ban down. DC then did what all anti-gun jurisdictions always do. They complied just enough to stay out of the court and they rebuilt their restrictions in a different form.

[00:03:15]Semi-automatic rifles became a new target and that is why 17 years after Heler, the federal government had to sue the same city again. Remember, it's a lot more difficult if they don't ban an AR-15 by name. They just ban it by practice. Oh, you want firearms? Easy.

[00:03:34]Just fill out this form, go to the local police department, in and out. You'll be fine. Only to see a pattern emerge of, "Oh, they don't let me register certain firearms." Never mind the legality and constitutionality of the registration, which is absurd in the first place. I know. Comment section. I know. I'm with you. Then you've got the 2022 Brun decision, which made the legal landscape even clearer in favor of the Second Amendment. Brun eliminated the old balancing tests that gave anti-gun judges basically the ability to cover and uphold old restrictions under the Brun case. This is the 2022 one. A firearm regulation is only constitutional if it is consistent with the historical tradition of firearm regulation in the United States. There is no historical tradition of banning commonlyowned firearms. That's a problem when it comes to AR-15s because the AR-15, as I've already mentioned once or twice, we're at 32 million baseline floor number. 32 million AR-15 and AR-15 style rifles in the country. It is the most common firearm owned by citizens.

[00:04:48]Number one reason why people buy it.

[00:04:50]They say for self-defense. The DOJ is using that standard as a hammer. And they're not just swinging at DC. And very importantly now judges are no longer able to hide behind these old interest balancing tests of well yeah you know on the one hand we do have the second amendment but on the other hand it is pretty dangerous people are saying and uh you know I think when we balance these interests against one another you don't really need it. That was the old interest balancing test and how anti-gun judges ran it. Can't do that anymore.

[00:05:21]Although one recent court tried but that's a different video for another time. In September 2025, the Civil Rights Division filed what was described as the first ever affirmative federal lawsuit in support of gun owners targeting the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department. You heard about it here.

[00:05:36]That case alleged a deliberate pattern of what you could call unconscionable delay. In other words, Los Angeles Sheriff's Department was intentionally creating massive unreasonable delays in processing the concealed carry permit applications for folks in California.

[00:05:56]The DOJ reviewed the data spanning more than 8,000 concealed carry applications and found delays running well beyond what California's own laws say need to happen. So, in other words, the sheriff's department was violating their own laws. The problem of course is who watches the watchers? Well, presumably that would of course be the California Attorney General's office. I don't think they're going to step in in support of the Second Amendment and citizen rights and being provictim. I don't see that in them. That's where you've got to turn to the feds here. Okay? At least that's one of the options. Law-abiding Californians were waiting months or even years for permits that were constitutionally they were entitled to. in Wisconsin, very fast turnaround, about a week, give or take. Sometimes longer, sometimes less, but I've heard stories. Okay, you get the idea. It's fast. The DOJ stepped in with that lawsuit. Three months after that, Trump's Department of Justice sued the Virgin Islands Police Department.

[00:06:55]The Virgin Islands Police Department, the VIP, had constructed a permitting process so burdensome it functionally denied residents their Second Amendment rights. We're talking about unannounced home searches, mandatory boltedin gun safes as a condition of getting a permit. That's expensive. And application backlogs that dragged out practically indefinitely. The Supreme Court struck down a materially basically the same kind of you need a proper reason to get a firearm. That was what New York tried in the Brun case. The VIP was still operating as if the Brun case had never happened. Trump's DOJ stepped in to correct that and helped show them the light. Then in May of 2026, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanch announced back-to-back lawsuits against Denver and the state of Colorado. Denver, as you heard us report here as well, had a 37-year ban on so-called assault weapons, aka America's most commonly used firearm, the AR-15. One day after the city's mayor publicly told the DOJ his answer was quote, "Hell no." End quote. In response to, "Are you open to being constitutional?" The DOJ decided to file suit. The day after that, they filed a second complaint. This one was against the state of Colorado for its magazine ban, which makes it a crime to possess or sell any magazine capable of holding more than 15 rounds, aka the most popular magazines in America, the National Shooting Sports Foundation, NSSF, which is the big, among other things, the big industry group that aggregates data and takes a look at things. Off the top of my head, I can't remember if it was about 70 to 80%.

[00:08:30]Somewhere in there 70 to 80% of all magazines are so-called highcapacity magazines or they hold more than 10 rounds. They are banning the majority of magazines and they're calling the most common magazines high capacity when in reality they're normal capacity. The central argument that unites all these cases and runs through them is the constitutional test. Under Heler and Brun, the Second Amendment protects arms in common use for lawful purposes. You cannot ban the most popular arms in a country because they are the most popular arms in the country. If there was a historical tradition of banning them, they wouldn't be the most popular arms in the country. You see how that works? You cannot ban the AR-15 because it is the most popular firearm in the country. There's no historical tradition for it. You will never get through the United States Supreme Court tests on it.

[00:09:20]Sorry, it's over. It's a done case. Yet, cities, states, and municipalities persist. Hey, please excuse this brief interruption to bring you a word from our sponsor, me, or more specifically my law firm. You see, what you may not know about me is I'm not only an ex- prosecutor, criminal defense attorney, but I employ a few dozen attorneys all over the great state of Wisconsin. My firm handles criminal defense, traffic law, divorce, family law, as well as estate planning all across the dairy state. We've got different wings of different attorneys doing different things, so you don't have to have some sort of just generalist handling your case should you decide to come in. So, what's the ask? Well, look, if you've been with me for my journey of at this point about 10 years and counting, not all of them on my own YouTube channel, but about 10 years and counting of putting out free legal education content that's out there. First off, thank you for joining me and thanks for watching this video. And if all you can do is just keep watching, hitting the like button, sharing it around, commenting, thank you. And I really do mean that.

[00:10:20]However, if you want to take it one step further, please consider following the directions below, both in the description box as well as in a pinned comment down in the comment discussion field about how you can leave a fivestar review. So, again, if you can do that, I tremendously appreciate it. Not only myself, but everyone else want to thank you for doing that, too, because it helps us bring our mission across Wisconsin. Don't forget to stick around to the end of the video for our ever popular quote of the day. Now, back to the show. And folks, it even gets better. If you do the math, as I have, I assure you, I've got a video on this coming up. If you do the math on how many homicides per gun there are, what you get to is a startling conclusion.

[00:11:01]The AR-15 is one of the safest firearms in America. If you just want to tie in, okay, we've got this pool of firearms in America and this many times they're misused in a homicide.

[00:11:20]What's that rate?

[00:11:23]I've done the math. AR-15 is among the absolute safest, far safer than handguns. Far safer than handguns. The absolute safest firearms in existence.

[00:11:34]If we're going by the science, if we're trusting the science, the question isn't how do we take AR-15s away. The question is, how do we put AR-15s in more people's hands?

[00:11:45]And folks, I want to be clear. If you go back to a lot of the founding father quotes about firearms, the second amendment, the need for citizens to be armed, oftentimes you'll see something else that George Washington and others attach to those ideas. Not only armed, but disciplined. What they're talking about by disciplined isn't how rigidly can you sit at your desk in second grade. They're talking about the fact that you need to understand how to use them effectively. Part of the effectiveness is safety. Whether it's storage, transportation, use at the range, use when hunting, you name it. Please follow the founding father's advice. Understand how to be disciplined. Understand how to be effective. effective is hitting what you're shooting at.

[00:12:32]It's also being safe. All those tie together. The last thing I want to mention here is I completely understand that if you're living in an anti-gun state, how you can very reasonably feel like Tom, you're telling me that we're winning, but I'm looking around and the gun laws have gotten way worse where I am in the last 3 to 5 years.

[00:12:52]I hear you. I'm not telling you that you're wrong. Wars, whether legal or kinetic, aren't won in a day. Rome wasn't built in a day. All those kind of cliches. The anti-gunners, they see the writing on the wall for the direction that the Supreme Court is going in. And I hope they go a lot faster in. I'm not pretending that I know how this is going to turn out. But what I can tell you is look, in the big picture, we are winning. We have to keep going. We have to support the fantastic organizations that are out there like GOA, FPC, NAGR, SAF, all those groups and foundations need our help to target down these states and to get more of these cases before the Supreme Court. I know they haven't been taking them. That will change. What I want to hear from you in the comment section below is what you think is going on with all this. Where do you see the end game? Do you think the United States Supreme Court's be taking up enough of these cases before the political winds shift them in the anti-second amendment direction? Look, I'm not a wideeyed optimist on this.

[00:13:55]There's going to be wins. There's going to be setbacks. We've seen plenty of each so far, but I'm still liking the trajectory that we're on now compared to 5 years ago as a nation. What do you think are some of the key points we need to do as pro-second amendment people?

[00:14:08]Not team red, not team blue, but is pro- second amendment to move the needle. What can we actually do? Not just whine and moan online, which might be fun, but not terribly productive. Let me know in the comments section. I look forward to reading those. Be sure to hit that like button.

[00:14:25]We're going to close out with our ever popular quote of the day. This one comes from Samuel Adams at the Massachusetts Ratifying Convention back in 1788 who said, quote, "The Constitution shall never be construed to prevent people of the United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms."

[00:14:44]End quote. In English, what that means is the Constitution shall never be interpreted to stop people who are peaceful from being able to own and possess firearms and other weapons. I look forward to seeing your comments. Don't forget to hit that like button. I'll see you in the next one. Take care. Thanks for joining us on that video. And if you liked that one, then I think you're going to like these over here, too.