On a Friday afternoon, the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division did something that would have been unthinkable a few years ago: it put a sitting governor on formal notice that signing gun control legislation would trigger a federal lawsuit defending the Second Amendment. The target was Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger, and the weapon was a two-page letter from Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon that reads less like diplomatic correspondence and more like a litigation hold notice.
The Letter and Its Target
The letter zeroes in on SB 749, the Virginia assault weapons ban that would criminalize the purchase, sale, and manufacture of AR-15s and other semi-automatic firearms in common use. Dhillon’s language is blunt: the Civil Rights Division “will commence litigation” if Virginia enacts bills that “unconstitutionally limit law-abiding Americans’ individual right to bear arms.”
Dhillon invoked Executive Order 14206, signed by President Trump in February 2025, which directed the Attorney General to take affirmative steps to ensure Second Amendment rights are not infringed. She noted that immediately upon being sworn in as Assistant Attorney General, she launched the department’s first-ever investigation into practices alleged to violate law-abiding citizens’ Second Amendment rights, and that her division has since formally created a dedicated Second Amendment Section — the first of its kind in DOJ history.
The letter does not merely threaten. It invites Virginia’s attorney general to confer with Acting Chief Andrew Darlington of the Second Amendment Section “in an effort to avoid unnecessary litigation.” That is the prosecutorial equivalent of a polite warning before the handcuffs come out.
The Legal Foundation: Building Brick by Brick
What makes the DOJ’s letter legally formidable is the case law it marshals. Dhillon cites the Supreme Court’s unanimous 2025 opinion in Smith & Wesson Brands, Inc. v. Estados Unidos Mexicanos, which noted that the AR-15 “is both widely legal and bought by many ordinary consumers.” She also points to Garland v. Cargill (2024), where even Justice Sotomayor’s dissent acknowledged that AR-15s are “commonly available semi-automatic rifles” — hardly a concession from a friend of gun control.
The letter further cites Justice Kavanaugh’s statement respecting the denial of certiorari in Snope v. Brown (2025), in which Kavanaugh observed that Americans possess an estimated twenty to thirty million AR-15s and that “this Court should and presumably will address the AR-15 issue soon.”
These citations are not random. They reflect a deliberate, incremental strategy — one brick laid upon another — to establish that semi-automatic rifles in common use are constitutionally protected under District of Columbia v. Heller’s “dangerous and unusual” framework.
The Strategic Calculus: Why States, Not Congress
The DOJ’s laser focus on state gun control laws is not accidental. Consider the Supreme Court’s track record. In Heller, the Court struck down D.C.’s handgun ban. In McDonald v. City of Chicago, it incorporated the Second Amendment against the states and invalidated Chicago’s handgun ban. In Caetano v. Massachusetts, it vacated a stun gun conviction. In New York State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n v. Bruen, it dismantled New York’s discretionary carry permitting regime. And in Wolford v. Lopez, currently pending, the challenge arises from a Hawaii state law.
Contrast this with United States v. Rahimi, where the Court upheld a federal statute — 18 U.S.C. section 922(g)(8) — prohibiting firearm possession by those subject to domestic violence restraining orders. The pattern is instructive: the Court has shown far greater willingness to strike down state and local restrictions than federal statutes enacted by Congress. The votes of Justices Kavanaugh, Roberts, and Alito are more reliably pro-Second Amendment when the target is state overreach rather than congressional action.
This explains why the DOJ is channeling its resources toward Virginia, Illinois, and other blue-state jurisdictions rather than picking fights over federal gun control laws. Favorable precedent is more likely to emerge from challenges to state laws, and unfavorable precedent — the kind that could haunt the Second Amendment for decades — is less likely to result.
What Comes Next
Governor Spanberger faces a deadline. Her General Assembly has forwarded over twenty bills restricting Second Amendment rights. If she signs SB 749 into law, the DOJ has all but promised a federal lawsuit seeking injunctive relief. The question is whether Spanberger, a former CIA officer who has staked her governorship on a gun control agenda, will blink.
For the Second Amendment community, this is exactly the kind of executive action many voted for — the full weight of the federal government deployed not against gun owners, but on their behalf. The fight is incremental, the progress is measured in individual cases and administrative actions, and no single letter resolves the broader constitutional question. But having the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division treat the right to keep and bear arms as an actual civil right — and enforce it accordingly — is a significant development that should not be understated.
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.