The Trump Department of Justice just dropped a heavyweight response brief in its lawsuit challenging the District of Columbia’s ban on semi-automatic rifles — and the legal reasoning is devastating for the anti-gun crowd. After the DOJ sued DC under 34 U.S.C. Section 12601 for maintaining a pattern and practice of enforcing an unconstitutional firearms ban, the District fired back with a motion to dismiss, arguing the DOJ lacks authority to bring such a case. The DOJ’s response makes clear: that argument is dead on arrival.
The Statute Says What It Says
At the heart of this fight is Section 12601, the federal civil rights enforcement statute. It makes it unlawful for any governmental authority or its agents to engage in a pattern or practice of law enforcement conduct that “deprives persons of rights, privileges, or immunities secured or protected by the Constitution or laws of the United States.” Full stop. No asterisks, no carve-outs, no footnote reading “except the Second Amendment.”
The DOJ’s brief, filed on behalf of Attorney General Pam Bondi and Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon, lays out the case with surgical precision. DC does not dispute that it is a governmental authority. It does not dispute that Chief Jeffery Carroll and the Metropolitan Police Department are its agents. It does not dispute that MPD routinely enforces the assault weapons ban. The only question left is whether that ban is unconstitutional — and that is a merits question, not a basis to dismiss.
As the brief states: DC’s “desire to limit the statute’s protection to exclude a right that they disfavor … is not a valid ground to dismiss the United States government’s complaint.”
DC’s Real Objection: They Don’t Like This Right
Strip away the procedural dressing, and DC’s argument reduces to a single proposition: Section 12601 was meant for Fourth Amendment violations and police brutality cases, not for the Second Amendment. The DOJ historically went after police departments for excessive force and discriminatory practices. How dare they now use the same tool to protect gun rights?
But the statute’s text draws no such distinction. It protects all rights “secured or protected by the Constitution.” The Second Amendment is a fundamental, individually held constitutional right — the Supreme Court said so in District of Columbia v. Heller, reaffirmed it in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, and did not disturb it in United States v. Rahimi. If the DOJ can sue a police department for a pattern and practice of warrantless searches, it can sue a city for a pattern and practice of denying citizens their right to possess constitutionally protected firearms.
AR-15s Are Protected Arms
The brief then pivots to the merits in a way that Second Amendment supporters will find deeply satisfying. The DOJ argues that AR-15 semi-automatic rifles are plainly “arms” under the Second Amendment’s text. Citing Heller, the brief notes that “arms” covers “all weapons of offense or armor of defense,” extending prima facie to “all instruments that constitute bearable arms, even those that were not in existence at the time of the founding.”
AR-15s fall squarely within this definition. They are also in common use — which matters because the Supreme Court has held that the Second Amendment protects weapons “in common use by law-abiding citizens.” The DOJ drives this point home by citing Justice Kagan’s unanimous opinion in Smith & Wesson Brands, Inc. v. Estados Unidos Mexicanos, where even the Court’s liberal wing acknowledged that AR-15s “are both widely legal and bought by many ordinary consumers.” When Justice Kagan tells you AR-15s are widely legal and commonly owned, the District of Columbia should take the hint.
Kavanaugh’s Dissent Comes Home to Roost
The brief also invokes then-Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s dissent in Heller v. District of Columbia (Heller II) at the D.C. Circuit, in which he anticipated the text, history, and tradition framework that the Supreme Court later adopted in Bruen. Kavanaugh concluded that AR-15s are in common use and constitutionally protected, and that it is “analytically difficult to distinguish the AR-15s at issue here from the handguns at issue in Heller.” Both are semi-automatic. Both are used by law-abiding citizens for lawful purposes including self-defense. If banning handguns violates the Second Amendment, banning AR-15s does too.
This is a textbook example of how incremental legal victories compound over time. The Smith & Wesson decision. Kavanaugh’s Heller II dissent. Bruen’s framework. Each one was a brick. The DOJ is now assembling those bricks into a wall that DC’s assault weapons ban cannot survive.
What Comes Next
DC’s motion to dismiss is almost certainly going to fail. The statute’s text is plain, the DOJ’s application is straightforward, and the District has no credible basis for carving the Second Amendment out of federal civil rights protection. When the case proceeds to the merits, the DOJ will have precedent, text, and history on its side. This is the fight that matters most for the Second Amendment — and the Trump administration is bringing it with everything it has.
This article is based on analysis by Mark W. Smith on The Four Boxes Diner. Watch the original video. This does not constitute legal advice.