The DOJ is suing states now, and Colorado is just the beginning

The bottom line

The Trump DOJ just filed its second major Second Amendment offensive lawsuit in two days, this time against the entire state of Colorado over its ban on standard-capacity magazines. Harmeet Dhillon’s Civil Rights Division is not playing defense anymore. DC, Maryland, and Virginia should be paying very close attention right now.

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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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Colorado has had a 15-round magazine limit since 2013. House Bill 13-1224, codified at C.R.S. § 18-12-302, makes it a class 2 misdemeanor to possess or sell any magazine capable of holding more than 15 rounds. A class 2 misdemeanor. For owning something that ships standard in tens of millions of firearms sold across this country. That law sat on the books for over a decade, mostly unmolested, because no one with the institutional firepower to challenge it ever chose to act.

That changed on May 6, 2026. The Department of Justice filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado in United States v. Colorado, No. 26-cv-01950, targeting C.R.S. § 18-12-302 as an unconstitutional restriction on Second Amendment rights. One day earlier, DOJ had filed United States v. City and County of Denver, No. 1:26-cv-01929, going after Denver’s assault weapons ordinance under DRMC § 38-121(c). Two cases, two consecutive days, same district, same legal theory. Nobody who has been paying attention thinks that schedule is accidental.

What the complaint actually argues

Harmeet Dhillon, Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division, put out the statement herself: “Colorado’s ban on certain magazines is political virtue signaling at the expense of Americans’ constitutional right to keep and bear arms.”

The complaint’s legal theory runs through New York State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n v. Bruen, 597 U.S. 1 (2022). Under Bruen, any firearms regulation has to be grounded in the text of the Second Amendment and consistent with the historical tradition of firearms regulation in America. The government has to produce a historical analogue, a comparable law from the founding era or Reconstruction. Colorado cannot produce one, because none exists. There was no concept of a “standard-capacity magazine ban” in 1791, in 1868, or at any point in American history until anti-gun activists invented the term “high-capacity” and started pushing these laws in the early 1990s.

The complaint also leans on the “common use” doctrine from District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008). Magazines holding more than 15 rounds are standard equipment for the AR-15, the most commonly owned rifle in the United States, as the Supreme Court found in a 9-0 ruling in the Smith & Wesson case. You cannot ban a component that ships standard in the most popular rifle in America and credibly claim that is not an infringement on a constitutionally protected right.

The DOJ also rejects the “large-capacity” label outright, calling it “tendentious” and “politically charged.” That matters legally, not just rhetorically. The label implies something abnormal, something outside the mainstream. But 30-round STANAG magazines are what the AR-15 platform was designed around. Calling them “large-capacity” is like calling a standard car gas tank “oversized” and then banning it. The language is part of how these restrictions get normalized, and the DOJ is right to refuse it.

Why this matters beyond Colorado

In the past week alone: 34 ATF rules rolled back (covered at /atfreform), the Denver assault weapons ban challenged in federal court (covered at /denverarban), and now the state of Colorado sued over its magazine ban. That pace of Second Amendment enforcement action from the executive branch has no recent precedent.

The DOJ’s Civil Rights Division has roughly 350 employees total, with a Second Amendment subdivision that probably numbers around 20 attorneys. Twenty attorneys against a national landscape of unconstitutional gun laws across California, New York, Illinois, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Maryland, DC, Virginia, and others. The workload is genuinely enormous.

When asked whether other jurisdictions should expect the same treatment, Dhillon said: “We do have other cities like this — District of Columbia also has a similar ban. We sued them already and we will be absolutely looking for other opportunities.”

DC is already in litigation. Colorado’s magazine ban just got sued. Denver’s assault weapons ordinance just got sued. And she said explicitly they are looking for more.

Virginia has a red flag law, a universal background check scheme, a handgun rationing law, and an assault weapons ban currently in state court litigation. Maryland has magazine capacity restrictions and its own assault weapons ban. Dhillon has named Virginia publicly. These are not speculative future targets.

I want to be honest about the constraints here, because I’ve been burned before by optimism that got ahead of reality. The Second Amendment subdivision is small. Litigation takes years. Even if DOJ prevails in Colorado and Denver at the district court level, both cases will be appealed into the Tenth Circuit, which is not friendly ground. There are only so many cases that can be worked simultaneously with full resources.

What is actually different now compared to any previous Republican administration: the DOJ is filing original offensive lawsuits against states and cities for violating constitutional rights. Not just amicus briefs. Not just declining to defend Biden-era rules. Actually suing. That shift is real and it matters.

Dhillon is not Pam Bondi

Pam Bondi, as Attorney General of Florida, supported red flag laws. She supported 18-to-20-year-old handgun purchase bans. Whatever her virtues as a political figure, she was not a Second Amendment advocate in any serious sense.

Harmeet Dhillon is a different situation. Before she became AAG, she personally argued in the Seventh Circuit against Illinois’s assault weapons ban. She has actual courtroom experience litigating Second Amendment cases from the plaintiff side. She understands Bruen as a working legal framework she has had to apply in real federal appellate arguments, not as a set of talking points she picked up recently.

That shows in how these suits are built. The Colorado complaint applies the Bruen text-and-history test rigorously. It attacks the “large-capacity” framing on substantive legal grounds. It identifies common use as the dispositive constitutional question. Someone who genuinely understands Second Amendment jurisprudence put this together.

Colorado AG Phil Weiser called the lawsuit a “dangerous overreach” that “turns the mission of the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division on its head.” That tells you everything about how Weiser understands the Civil Rights Division’s job, which apparently is to protect gun control laws rather than constitutional rights. Dhillon’s read is the correct one: the right to keep and bear arms is a civil right, and the Civil Rights Division exists to defend it.

Where this goes from here

United States v. Colorado and United States v. City and County of Denver will proceed through the District of Colorado. Both defendants will move to dismiss. DOJ will likely seek preliminary injunctions, which matters because it determines whether Coloradans can actually possess standard-capacity magazines during the years this litigation takes to resolve.

Beyond Colorado: DC magazine restrictions are already in litigation. Virginia has been named. Maryland is a logical next filing given the density of its gun laws and its proximity to DC. The question is sequencing and resources, not intent.

I’ve spent years watching the Biden DOJ defend every gun control measure it could reach and attack every Second Amendment protection in sight. For the first time in my lifetime, the federal executive branch is treating the Second Amendment as a civil right that the government has an affirmative obligation to defend against state infringement. The Fourteenth Amendment incorporated the Second Amendment against the states. Suing Colorado and Denver for violating that incorporated right is exactly what the constitutional framework calls for.

The shift in posture under Dhillon is real, it is documented, and it is moving faster than anything we have seen before. We have more wins in the last two weeks than we got in years of litigation-as-usual.

Take the wins. Stay honest about what is still ahead.