The Department of Justice filed a lawsuit on Monday against the Washington, D.C., local government over its laws banning various semiautomatic guns, including AR-15s, alleging the laws violate the Second Amendment.
The lawsuit targets a local law that requires district residents to register firearms with the Metropolitan Police Department as a condition of legal possession. The DOJ alleged that the law unconstitutionally denies residents from registering “a wide variety of commonly used semi-automatic firearms, such as the Colt AR-15 series rifles, which is among the most popular of firearms in America, and a variety of other semi-automatic rifles and pistols that are in common use.”
“As a result of conduct by all DC Defendants, which District of Columbia’s law mandates, law-abiding citizens possessing firearms protected under the Second Amendment face arrest, fines, prosecution, and forfeiture of their property,” the lawsuit said.
Attorney General Pam Bondi called the lawsuit a part of the DOJ’s “ironclad commitment to protecting the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding Americans.”
“Washington, D.C.’s ban on some of America’s most popular firearms is an unconstitutional infringement on the Second Amendment — living in our nation’s capital should not preclude law-abiding citizens from exercising their fundamental constitutional right to keep and bear arms,” Bondi said in a statement.
The lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia marks the latest bid to strike down laws banning the AR-15 and similar firearms as unconstitutional. The matter has been petitioned to the Supreme Court in recent years, but the justices have yet to take up a case on the matter.
In June, the high court declined to hear an appeal of a lawsuit attempting to strike down Maryland’s law banning “assault weapons,” including the AR-15, as unconstitutional. Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Neil Gorsuch said they would have taken up the case, but a petition needs four justices on board to be heard by the Supreme Court.
Thomas offered a blistering dissent to the high court’s decision not to hear the case, criticizing the other justices for punting on the matter.
“I would not wait to decide whether the government can ban the most popular rifle in America. That question is of critical importance to tens of millions of law-abiding AR–15 owners throughout the country. We have avoided deciding it for a full decade,” Thomas said.
“I doubt we would sit idly by if lower courts were to so subvert our precedents involving any other constitutional right. Until we are vigilant in enforcing it, the right to bear arms will remain ‘a second-class right,’” he added.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who declined to take up the Maryland case, said in a separate statement that he believes the high court will eventually hear a case about the legality of AR-15 bans.
“Additional petitions for certiorari will likely be before this Court shortly and, in my view, this Court should and presumably will address the AR–15 issue soon, in the next Term or two,” Kavanaugh said in a June statement regarding the denial of the petition.
SUPREME COURT COULD LOAD UP ON GUN CASES THIS TERM
While the high court is currently hearing an appeal on any laws banning AR-15s, the justices will hear a case in January over whether Hawaii is violating the Second Amendment with a law that bars handgun owners who have a concealed carry permit from carrying their weapon on private property unless the owner, or manager of the property, has given the person “express authorization to carry a firearm on the property.”
Arguments in Wolford v. Lopez are scheduled for Jan. 20, 2026.