The Trump Department of Justice just filed an amicus brief in Granata v. Campbell, No. 25-1918 (1st Cir.), supporting a Second Amendment challenge to Massachusetts’s Approved Firearms Roster — and it is a genuinely excellent brief. The roster bars licensed firearms dealers from selling any handgun not on a state-approved list. The practical result is a de facto ban on dozens of the most commonly owned handguns in America, including multiple Glock models, inside the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The DOJ brief, signed by Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon, Principal Deputy AAG Jesus A. Osete, and Acting Chief of the Second Amendment Section Andrew Darlington, was filed January 28, 2026, in the First Circuit — unequivocally the worst court in the country for Second Amendment rights.
Why the Massachusetts Roster Is a Gun Ban, Not a Consumer Safety Law
Massachusetts dresses up its handgun roster as a consumer-protection measure, but that framing is transparent nonsense. If a Glock model that law-abiding Americans can walk into any store and buy in forty-nine other states cannot be sold by a licensed dealer in Massachusetts, that is a gun ban. Full stop. The DOJ brief hammers this point by invoking Minneapolis Star & Tribune Co. v. Minnesota Commissioner of Revenue, 460 U.S. 575 (1983), where Justice Sandra Day O’Connor struck down a targeted tax on paper and ink as a First Amendment violation because it indirectly burdened the press. The logic transfers directly: an indirect restriction that makes it practically impossible to acquire a constitutionally protected arm is just as unconstitutional as an outright prohibition. The roster is the indirect attack; the result is the direct deprivation.
The brief identifies numerous widely sold handgun models unavailable for commercial purchase in Massachusetts because they are off the roster. It specifically notes that Glocks “are among the most commonly manufactured weapons in America according to the ATF.” There is no plausible historical tradition of banning commonly owned arms — Heller already settled that in 2008.
The Most Important Legal Point in the Brief: “Infringement” Is Not a Dictionary Word
Here is where the brief earns its grade. The district court below — Chief U.S. District Judge Denise J. Casper, who granted summary judgment for Massachusetts on August 29, 2025 — tried to define “infringe” at the textual level, essentially asking whether the roster left gun buyers with alternative means to exercise their rights. The DOJ correctly obliterates that approach. As the brief puts it:
Whether a law infringes the right to bear arms is a legal conclusion based on text and history under Bruen, not a factual inquiry into whether individuals have alternate means to exercise their rights.
This is an insight I have been pressing at venues like the Federalist Society for years, and I am delighted to see DOJ state it so precisely. The word “infringe” in the Second Amendment is not a term you look up in a dictionary. It is the output — the legal conclusion — that emerges from working through the Bruen methodology. You start with the text. If the plaintiff’s rights-bearing conduct is implicated by the plain text, the burden shifts to the government. The government must then demonstrate a historical tradition of analogous firearms regulation. If that tradition exists, the law does not infringe the right. If it does not exist, the law is an infringement. The answer to the Bruen analysis is the definition of infringement. The district court tried to answer a derived conclusion at the wrong step of the equation — moving the cart before the horse, as the DOJ puts it — and that error infected the entire ruling.
The Right to Acquire Is a Second Amendment Right
The brief also drives home a critical point that lower courts have been getting wrong: you cannot possess or carry an arm you were never permitted to acquire. The roster, by blocking commercial acquisition of covered handguns from licensed dealers, implicates the plain text of the Second Amendment just as directly as an outright possession ban. The DOJ writes:
The Second Amendment guarantees law-abiding citizens the right to acquire, possess, and carry arms that are in common use for lawful purposes by law-abiding citizens.
The district court’s implicit holding — that there is no protected right to acquire — is absurd on its face. You are not born with a firearm. The only way to exercise the right to keep and bear arms is to first acquire an arm. Recognizing a robust right to acquire is the next essential brick in the doctrinal wall, and the Trump DOJ is laying it correctly.
A DOJ Second Amendment Section — and Anti-Gun States on Notice
Beyond the legal substance, there is something worth noting on the cover page of this brief: Andrew Darlington is listed as Acting Chief of the Second Amendment Section, Civil Rights Division, DOJ. That section was formally created in December 2025. For the first time in American history, the federal government has a dedicated DOJ unit whose job is enforcing the Second Amendment. That is a genuine institutional milestone.
Anti-gun states should read the room. New York, California, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts — these jurisdictions have a target on their most constitutionally vulnerable gun laws. The DOJ is not spraying buckshot; it is making deliberate, targeted interventions in cases where the legal theory is strong and the stakes are high. Granata v. Campbell in the worst Second Amendment circuit in the country is exactly the kind of case worth fighting — and with the Trump DOJ standing behind Firearms Policy Coalition and the plaintiffs, including Massachusetts dealers like The Gun Runner, LLC, that fight just got considerably more powerful.
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.