Yesterday, December 22, 2025, the Department of Justice filed United States v. District of Columbia, No. 1:25-cv-4458 (D.D.C.). The target is DC’s effective ban on AR-15s and other semi-automatic rifles, which the District runs through D.C. Code § 7-2502.01 (no possession of a firearm in DC without a registration certificate) and D.C. Code § 7-2502.02 (no registration certificate for “assault weapons,” a category that sweeps in AR-15-pattern rifles). Lash those two statutes together and you get a flat ban dressed up as paperwork. This is the first affirmative federal Second Amendment lawsuit DOJ has ever brought against the District of Columbia since District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008).
The New Civil Rights Division Second Amendment Section Has Teeth
The complaint was filed out of the newly stood-up Second Amendment Section inside the Civil Rights Division, run by Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon. AG Pam Bondi gave the public statement: “Washington DC’s ban on some of America’s most popular firearms is an unconstitutional infringement on the Second Amendment.” AAG Dhillon promised that “many more important lawsuits” are coming.
For viewers tracking what this DOJ has actually done: the amicus brief in Barnett v. Raoul (June 13, 2025) was the first time the federal government ever told a court a state assault-weapons ban is unconstitutional. The amicus brief in Cheeseman v. Platkin in the Third Circuit followed on September 19, 2025. On the affirmative side, the LA County Sheriff carry-license suit was the opening shot. This DC AR-15 case is the second affirmative front and the first aimed squarely at a categorical rifle ban.
The Core Argument Is Black-Letter Heller and Bruen
The merits theory is what I have been arguing for years. Heller says that arms “in common use” for lawful purposes by law-abiding citizens are protected, and only weapons that are “dangerous AND unusual” — a conjunctive test — fall outside the Second Amendment’s protection. The AR-15 is the most popular rifle in America. It is not unusual. If it is not unusual, it cannot be dangerous and unusual. End of story.
The complaint leans hard on Smith & Wesson Brands v. Estados Unidos Mexicanos, 605 U.S. ___ (2025), decided unanimously on June 5, 2025, where the Court itself described semi-automatic rifles like the AR-15 as commonly owned by Americans for lawful purposes. That is binding language out of the Supreme Court doing the load-bearing work on the “common use” prong.
Under New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, 597 U.S. 1 (2022), once a plaintiff shows the Second Amendment’s plain text covers the conduct, the burden shifts to the government to identify a historical analogue from the founding era. DC cannot do that for a categorical ban on the country’s most popular rifle. If this case is ever granted certiorari, I count at least six votes on the Supreme Court for the proposition that AR-15s are protected arms and cannot be banned. The question has never been the law — it has been whether the Court would spend the political capital. DOJ as plaintiff changes that calculation.
The Heller II Problem — And Why Footnote 1 Matters
The D.C. Circuit upheld DC’s registration scheme in Heller v. District of Columbia, 670 F.3d 1244 (D.C. Cir. 2011) — known as Heller II — using intermediate scrutiny. That is bad precedent sitting on top of the D.C. Circuit, and it has to be defused before the district court can rule for DOJ. DOJ defuses it in footnote 1 on page 5 of the complaint:
The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia in Heller v. District of Columbia upheld the registration prohibitions at issue in the present litigation, but that court utilized intermediate scrutiny. Subsequently, the United States Supreme Court in NYSRPA v. Bruen expressly repudiated application of intermediate scrutiny… Accordingly, the Circuit Court’s assessment does not bar the current claim and is not binding precedent. Moreover, then-Judge Kavanaugh reached the opposite conclusion, employing the text, history, and tradition test ultimately adopted by Bruen.
Bruen explicitly buried tiers of scrutiny in the Second Amendment context. Before Bruen we essentially never won a Second Amendment case, because tiers of scrutiny let the government win every time. Heller II was decided under the very framework the Supreme Court has since repudiated, so its holding is not binding on the district court today.
The Kavanaugh Dissent Becomes the Roadmap
The third sentence of that footnote is the one I want gun owners to pay attention to. Then-Judge Brett Kavanaugh dissented in Heller II back in 2011, and he did two things. First, he said intermediate scrutiny was the wrong framework and that the correct test was text, history, and tradition — eleven years before Bruen adopted that approach. Second, he said gun registration requirements have no founding-era analogue and are therefore unconstitutional. He drew the line between public-carry licensing, which has some historical pedigree, and registration of guns kept in the home, which does not.
Why does registration have no analogue? Because the founding generation knew that the way governments confiscate guns is by first finding out where the guns are. British General Thomas Gage tried to seize the Bostonians’ arms in the aftermath of the Battle of Lexington and Concord on April 19, 1775. That memory is baked into the Second Amendment.
The Curveball: DOJ Asks for Registration, Then Hints at Killing It
Here is the wrinkle I want viewers to track. On page 8, the prayer for relief asks for a declaration that DC’s pattern of prohibiting registration of AR-15s by law-abiding citizens violates the Second Amendment. In other words: let our people register their AR-15s. That is a half-loaf request — it accepts the registration regime and asks for AR-15s to be allowed through the door.
But footnote 1, by flagging Kavanaugh’s dissent, plants the flag for the other half of the loaf: registration itself is constitutionally vulnerable. So DOJ is simultaneously asking DC to register AR-15s while reminding the court that the registration scheme might not survive scrutiny in its own right. Strategically, I get it. Half a loaf — AR-15s are protected arms and cannot be banned — is the headline win we need first. The full loaf, where DC registration goes away entirely under Bruen, can come in a follow-on case.
Combined with Barnett and Cheeseman, DOJ is methodically pushing the Supreme Court toward the ruling we have been waiting for: AR-15 bans are unconstitutional. Win that in the next year or two and it is a generational victory.
This article is based on analysis by Professor Mark W. Smith, constitutional attorney and Host of the Four Boxes Diner 2nd Amendment channel. Watch the original video here. This does not constitute legal advice.