BELLEVUE, WA – The Trump administration has filed a federal lawsuit against the District of Columbia, challenging the city’s continuing effort, despite Supreme Court rulings, to restrict and infringe upon the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens, and the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms is cheering the action.
“We are proud to see the Trump administration stand up for the constitutional and civil rights of Americans who want to exercise their Second Amendment rights,” said CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb. “This lawsuit shows the night and day difference between this administration and the previous one that attacked the right to keep and Bear arms at every turn.”
The lawsuit, filed by Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, head of the Civil Rights Division, names the District of Columbia and Metropolitan Police Chief Pamela Smith, in her official capacity, as defendants. In their complaint, the administration states the District “denies law-abiding citizens the ability to register a wide variety of commonly used semi-automatic firearms, such as the Colt AR-15 series rifles, which is among the most popular of firearms in America, and a variety of other semi-automatic rifles and pistols that are in common use.”
“The significance of the administration’s action here cannot be over-stated,” Gottlieb observed. “The Trump administration is taking the fight to restore Second Amendment rights literally to the belly of the beast. This lawsuit sends a message to every other anti-gun jurisdiction that the days of dancing around, or completely ignoring, Supreme Court rulings in Heller, McDonald and Bruen have come to an end.”
As the Justice Department’s lawsuit clearly notes, “D.C’s current semi-automatic firearms prohibition that bans many commonly used pistols, rifles or shotguns is based on little more than cosmetics, appearance, or the ability to attach accessories, and fails to take into account whether the prohibited weapon is “in common use today” or that law-abiding citizens may use these weapons for lawful purposes protected by the Second Amendment.
“This case concerns much more than dormant, bad law,” the complaint adds. “It concerns the very real requirement that the DC Defendants have acted and are continuing to act in blatant disregard to our Constitution and the rulings of our Nation’s highest court.”