The bottom line
Harmeet Dhillon has put Virginia’s gun laws directly in the DOJ’s crosshairs, and that is genuinely the best news Second Amendment supporters have received in years. It is not, however, a reason to relax. The laws are coming. The pain is real. And the litigation is going to take time that Virginia gun owners don’t have.
Attribution from Bearing Freedom. Watch the original video. Commentary, not legal advice.
A DOJ that actually knows what it’s doing
For most of my lifetime, the Department of Justice treated the Second Amendment as a bureaucratic inconvenience. The civil rights division existed to litigate voting rights and employment discrimination, not to protect the right to keep and bear arms. That was fine with the Obama and Biden administrations, which used the department as a vehicle to defend magazine bans, “assault weapon” bans, and DC’s permitting system so burdensome it functioned as a de facto prohibition on carry. The DOJ was the enemy, and every gun owner knew it.
That is no longer true. Harmeet Dhillon, the assistant attorney general for civil rights, announced the creation of a dedicated Second Amendment Section inside the Civil Rights Division and has been building it out with attorneys recruited specifically from the gun rights legal community, including lawyers from the National Association of Gun Rights. She has publicly stated her goal is to see every state regulation inconsistent with Heller and Bruen either struck down, settled, or withdrawn before she leaves the position. She personally argued against Illinois’s assault weapons ban before the Seventh Circuit in Barnett v. Raoul, which is not something you do if you’re treating the Second Amendment as a press release talking point. The DOJ has already sued DC over its semi-automatic rifle ban and challenged Virginia Islands’ permitting scheme. The message to state capitals is not ambiguous.
On January 26, 2026, when Virginia’s gun control package was still moving through the legislature, Dhillon posted publicly that the magazine restriction was “a blatant violation of Supreme Court precedent and it will not stand.” That was not a statement drafted by a communications director. That was the head of the Second Amendment enforcement section telling a state government what is coming.
Why the DOJ hasn’t sued Virginia yet
I know a lot of people are frustrated and asking why the federal government isn’t already in court blocking these laws. The answer is procedural, and it matters to understand.
You cannot obtain a federal injunction against a law that does not exist yet. Virginia’s most destructive bills from the 2026 session, including SB749’s assault weapons ban, carry an effective date of July 1, 2026. Governor Spanberger’s deadline to act on enrolled bills is April 13. Until those laws are in effect and being enforced, there is no ongoing constitutional violation to enjoin. Courts require an actual case or controversy under Article III. You cannot sue over a hypothetical future restriction, even when you know with certainty it is coming.
The moment these bills become enforceable law, the calculus changes entirely. Dhillon’s office has said it is monitoring the situation and fully expects to challenge the laws once they take effect. Virginia Citizens Defense League, GOA, and NRA-ILA have all indicated they have litigation prepared. The 4th Circuit is going to hear a lot about Virginia in the next few years.
That is good news. I genuinely mean that. Having both federal DOJ litigation and private gun rights organization challenges filing simultaneously is the most favorable legal environment for Second Amendment law in decades, and I think a lot of us have been so beaten down by years of losses that we underestimate how different the landscape looks now.
The honest account of what federal litigation cannot do
Here is where I refuse to sugarcoat things, because I think people deserve the straight truth.
Federal litigation takes time. The average civil rights case from initial filing to a circuit court ruling runs two to four years, often longer in contested constitutional matters. If the 4th Circuit upholds Virginia’s laws, which is not out of the question given its record on similar Maryland legislation, the question then becomes whether the Supreme Court grants certiorari. That process could stretch close to a decade in worst-case scenarios. In the meantime, Virginia’s laws are in effect. They are being enforced. People are being caught up in them.
Think about what that means concretely. Someone who bought a standard-capacity AR-15 in 2024, followed every law, stored it responsibly, and did everything right is now holding a firearm that cannot be transferred to anyone under SB749. A gun owner who legally carries a standard-capacity Glock under Virginia’s existing concealed carry permit might find that same firearm counts as an “assault firearm” under SB727’s sweeping public carry prohibition. A person who recently moved to Virginia from North Carolina with a valid NC permit is disarmed until they complete Virginia’s own process, thanks to SB115’s destruction of reciprocity.
These are not hypothetical edge cases. These are predictable consequences that will fall on innocent people who did nothing wrong. Some will get criminal records. Some will lose their gun rights. Some will spend money they don’t have on lawyers. I could come here and tell you the DOJ is riding to the rescue and everything will be fine. I would be lying to you, and that serves nobody.
The contradiction nobody in Richmond has to explain
There is something that deserves to be said plainly about the 2026 Virginia legislative session, because the press has mostly ignored it.
In the same session that produced an assault weapons ban, a statewide public carry prohibition, a gutting of concealed carry reciprocity, a ghost gun ban, expanded red flag authority, and mandatory gun buyback infrastructure at every law enforcement agency in the state, Virginia Democrats also advanced legislation to eliminate mandatory minimum sentences for violent offenses. House Bill 863 proposed removing mandatory minimums for manslaughter, rape, assaulting a law enforcement officer, and repeat violent felonies. That legislation ultimately died in conference, but the fact that it was advanced at all in the same session tells you everything about the actual priorities in play.
This is not a public safety agenda. A public safety agenda does not simultaneously reduce penalties for rapists and mandate criminal consequences for a gun owner who keeps their legally owned firearm in their nightstand instead of a locked case. These two directions are not in accidental tension. They are a coherent set of preferences about who should be in danger and who should be able to do something about it.
I think the Second Amendment community sometimes hesitates to make this argument because it sounds like whataboutism. It is not. It is the most direct critique possible of the stated justification for these laws. If the goal is reducing violence, the policy combination Virginia just passed actively works against that goal. The only consistent explanation is that the goal is not reducing violence.
What the DOJ signal actually means
Even before a single lawsuit is filed, Dhillon’s public statements have strategic value that shouldn’t be dismissed. State attorneys general and governors in purple states are now weighing whether signing a magazine ban is worth a DOJ lawsuit as a political liability. That deterrence effect is real. Some officials who might have moved on similar legislation are going to pause, at least until they see how Virginia plays out in court.
That matters. The Second Amendment enforcement section being built inside DOJ right now represents a structural shift in how federal authority is being deployed, and it is worth genuine appreciation from people who watched the department function as an adversary for years. Dhillon is not performing. She is litigating.
But she has also said clearly that her tenure is finite. Whatever gets built now can be torn down when the administration changes. The Second Amendment enforcement section that exists today does not have to exist in 2029. Federal intervention is a near-term tool, not a permanent structural protection. The only durable answer in Virginia is political, and Virginia gun owners lost that fight when the 2025 elections handed Democrats the governorship and a working legislative majority.
For now, if you live in Virginia, contact an attorney familiar with Virginia firearms law before July 1. Understand specifically which firearms and magazines you own that will be affected by SB749 and SB727. Understand what SB115 means for your reciprocity status if you hold an out-of-state permit. The legal landscape is changing materially on a fixed date. The people who suffer for being uninformed will not be the politicians who voted for this.
Attribution from Bearing Freedom. Watch the original video. Commentary, not legal advice.
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