The DOJ just put Virginia on notice

The bottom line

Governor Abigail Spanberger signed HB40 and three companion bills on April 10, 2026. That same afternoon, DOJ Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon sent a formal letter to Virginia AG Jay Jones warning that the federal Civil Rights Division will sue if the remaining assault weapons legislation takes effect. Virginia gun owners got a gut punch and a lifeline on the same day.

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This article is based on analysis from Bearing Freedom. Watch the original video. This is commentary, not legal advice.

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What happened on April 10 in Virginia is the biggest Second Amendment story in the country right now.

Spanberger signed HB40, the ghost gun ban, along with three other bills from a broader package of roughly 18 that cleared the General Assembly this session. HB40 bans manufacture, sale, and transfer of any unserialized firearm, with a possession ban kicking in later. Most of it takes effect January 1, 2027. The possession ban follows July 1, 2027.

What separates this from prior attempts is there’s no grandfather clause. Previous versions would have drawn a line at a manufacture date and left older guns alone. This one doesn’t. If you built a perfectly legal 80% lower five years ago, you have to comply with whatever serialization system Virginia eventually creates, or you’re a felon. No carve-out for property you owned before the law existed. Think about that.

The bigger bill, the one DOJ specifically flagged, is SB749. It passed the Senate 21-19 on February 9 and cleared the House 59-35 on March 4. Spanberger hadn’t signed it yet as of April 11, but the DOJ wasn’t waiting around. SB749 bans the purchase, sale, and transfer of “assault firearms,” which under Virginia’s definition pulls in AR-15s, a broad range of semiautomatic pistols, and any shotgun with a detachable magazine. Magazines over 15 rounds are separately banned. Violations are Class 1 misdemeanors. There is a grandfather clause for guns owned before July 1, 2026, but the sale and transfer ban heavily restricts what you can do with your property. You can sell it to an FFL or to someone out of state. The governor’s substitute added a family transfer exemption letting you gift it to an immediate family member (spouse, children, parents, grandparents, siblings), but only if you owned it before the cutoff and the recipient isn’t prohibited. That’s better than nothing, but it’s still a government permission slip for giving your own property to your own kid.

Harmeet Dhillon, the Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights, sent a formal letter to Jay Jones on April 10. The Civil Rights Division will commence litigation if SB749 and related bills take effect. The letter specifically calls out SB749 for “unconstitutionally restricting the making, buying, and selling of AR-15s and many other semi-automatic firearms in common use.” It cited DC v. Heller and NYSRPA v. Bruen. DOJ’s Second Amendment Section is standing by.

This is not a tweet. It’s a formal legal communication to a state attorney general. It has teeth.

I’m not a reflexive defender of the Trump DOJ on Second Amendment issues. I’ve been critical of Pam Bondi, and the record has been genuinely mixed. Harmeet Dhillon is different. She actually understands the doctrine. She knows what “in common use” means and why it defeats these bans under Heller. She already sued over the DC AR-15 ban in December 2025. That case is moving. She sued the LA County Sheriff over concealed-carry permit delays. She has an actual track record.

The constitutional case against SB749 isn’t hard to make. Heller says arms in “common use” for lawful purposes get Second Amendment protection. Bruen says if the plain text covers the conduct, the government has to prove the regulation is consistent with the nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation. There were roughly 20 million AR-15-style rifles in civilian circulation before Bruen was decided. There is no tradition, historical or otherwise, of banning the most popular rifle in America.

Courts have been inconsistent on this. The Fourth Circuit upheld Maryland’s ban. The Supreme Court declined cert, but Thomas, Alito, and Gorsuch all dissented. Thomas wrote that “it is difficult to see how Maryland’s categorical prohibition on AR-15s passes muster.” Kavanaugh has said the Court “should and presumably will address the AR-15 issue soon.” That day is coming. It hasn’t arrived yet, which is why lower courts are still going their own directions.

Dhillon’s letter matters partly because of the timing. Virginia’s laws don’t fully take effect until July 1, 2026 at the earliest. January 2027 for parts of HB40. No live enforcement means private plaintiffs have standing problems right now. You can’t sue over harm that hasn’t happened to you yet. The federal government has different tools. DOJ can challenge the laws before they kick in and seek a preliminary injunction. If Dhillon files, she could stop these before anyone in Virginia gets charged.

There’s a political layer here too, and I’d rather name it than ignore it. Virginia Democrats have a redistricting referendum on the April 21 ballot, a constitutional amendment that would let the legislature redraw congressional maps and potentially flip four House seats. Most people expected Spanberger to stall the gun bills until after the vote, running out the clock by bouncing them back to the Senate. She didn’t. She signed April 10. That put her in direct conflict with the Trump administration and handed them a clean story: they’re protecting Virginia gun owners from their own governor. The administration’s interests and ours line up right now, for their reasons and ours. I’ll take it.

One election is how we got here. That’s what I can’t get past. If Virginia had a Republican governor, none of these bills get signed. The legislature passed them, but a veto holds. Virginia held the governor’s mansion for four straight Republican terms. Then Spanberger won, and now the most popular rifle in America is banned from sale in the state. Maryland took years to get this bad. Virginia got there fast.

Real people absorb the cost while the courts work. Virginia gun owners are facing compliance windows that stretch out a year or more. People who built legal guns have decisions to make about serialization, and some of them won’t know what hit them until the first enforcement action lands. That’s not abstract, and the eventual litigation outcome doesn’t make the interim okay.

My read is that Dhillon files. SB749 is a cleaner target than a lot of what’s been litigated before, better facts, harder to defend under Bruen. A federal district court in the Eastern District of Virginia has a real shot at granting a preliminary injunction. But even then, Virginia gun owners carry the uncertainty until the courts actually act.

Win the long game. Understand what the short game cost. And vote like someone who knows what happens when you lose.