The Trace25%
Department of Justice Sues Virginia and California Over Gun Restrictions 19%
By Jennifer Mascia24% Chip Brownlee24%
7/1/2026, 9:43:36 PM
BS Summary: This article contains 25 faulty reasoning types, including Framing Effect, Representativeness Heuristic, and Hasty Generalization, with Appeal to Authority as the most egregious example at 16.8% saturation with 115 hits. Analysis detected 936 faulty-reasoning hits from 685 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 33.8% and a BS Rank of 19% (17,811 of 21,887 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 81.40% of the article peer group.
On July 1, the Department of Justice sued to overturn Virginia’s newly enacted assault weapons ban, fulfilling a promise made by Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon shortly after the bill became law in May.
The DOJ also sued to overturn California’s ban on firearms that can easily be modified with machine gun conversion devices.
The lawsuits were brought by the Civil Rights Division’s Second Amendment Section, a new office established by the Trump administration that treats gun owners as an oppressed minority.
The Civil Rights Division typically enforces anti-discrimination statutes — and suing states to overturn gun laws is something gun rights groups usually do, as The Trace and Mother Jones have reported .
To emphasize this point, Dhillon retweeted four gun groups celebrating news of the newly filed DOJ lawsuits.
Today’s filings bring the total number of DOJ’s gun-related lawsuits to seven.
The flurry of litigation began last September, when the Civil Rights Division filed suit against the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department over delays in issuing concealed carry permits.
Six weeks later, the division sued the police department in the Virgin Islands, a U.S. territory, over delays in its gun permitting process and requirements like bolted-in gun safes.
The division then began targeting bans on semiautomatic rifles and high-capacity magazines, first in Washington, D.C. , in December, then in Colorado in May.
In June, the division opened an investigation into Philadelphia’s concealed carry permit revocation process, which is typically a precursor to a lawsuit.
The California suit is the first Second Amendment Section lawsuit to target bans on firearms that can be easily converted into machine guns.
Over the past decade, machine gun conversion devices, commonly known as Glock switches or auto sears, have increasingly become a public safety threat.
When affixed to a standard semiautomatic handgun that fires one round per trigger pull, the small devices convert the weapon into a machine gun that can empty a magazine with a single trigger pull.
Federal law and more than two dozen states ban conversion devices, but only a few states have targeted the guns that are particularly susceptible to conversion.
As The Trace reported last month, California became the first state to adopt a law prohibiting “convertible pistols” in 2025.
Maryland, Connecticut, and New York passed similar laws this year.
The DOJ and gun rights groups refer to these laws as “Glock bans,” but they don’t ban Glocks outright.
Rather, they prohibit guns with a cruciform trigger bar, a defining component of Glocks that also makes them more susceptible to conversion.
Since Glock’s patent expired, the component has been adopted by other manufacturers.
Three gun rights groups — the National Rifle Association, Firearms Policy Coalition, and Second Amendment Foundation — filed suit in May to overturn Maryland’s ban.
The DOJ’s California lawsuit also seeks to overturn the state’s handgun roster, a list of guns approved for sale by the state.
Only two other states — Maryland and Massachusetts — have similar lists, which restrict the types of guns private citizens can buy.
California’s roster was already being challenged by several gun rights groups, including the NRA.
The DOJ’s lawsuit against Virginia was expected: After the state’s assault weapons ban passed in May, Dhillon posted “See you in court!”
on X.
But by the time the DOJ followed through six weeks later, a federal judge had already blocked the ban days before it was scheduled to take effect.
Federal appeals courts that have heard challenges to assault weapons bans have upheld them, including the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, which includes Virginia.
In a 10-5 decision in 2024, the court upheld Maryland’s assault weapons ban, and the Supreme Court passed on an opportunity to reverse that ruling.
Still, the Supreme Court will ultimately decide the issue: This week, the justices agreed to hear challenges to assault weapons bans in Connecticut and Cook County, Illinois.
Legal experts told The Trace that the laws are likely to be struck down.
Eleven states — including California — and Washington, D.C., have assault weapons bans on the books.
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100%flagged-word coverageHarmeet Dhillon
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