President Trump’s DOJ filed a lawsuit against Denver’s “assault weapons” ban on Tuesday, with Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche saying a ban on AR-15s and similar semiautomatics “violates the right to bear arms.”
Blanche added, “The Constitution is not a suggestion and the Second Amendment is not a second-class right.”
The DOJ released a statement in which Harmeet Dhillon, Assistant Attorney General for the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, said:
I have directed the Civil Rights Division, through our new Second Amendment Section, to defend law-abiding Americans from restrictions such as those we are challenging in these cases. Law-abiding Americans, regardless of what city or state they reside in, should not have to live under threat of criminal sanction just for exercising their Second Amendment right to possess arms which are owned by tens of millions of their fellow citizens.
The DOJ’s release also noted, “In 2008, the U.S. Supreme Court, in its landmark decision District of Columbia v. Heller, held that the Second Amendment protects the right of law-abiding citizens to possess weapons that are in common use for lawful purposes.”
The lawsuit comes after Denver Mayor Mike Johnston (D) said “hell no” to DOJ requests the city halt enforcement of the ban and “enter negotiations with federal officials to resolve the matter,” according to ABC 7.
Johnston called the ban “common sense.”
AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio and the director of global marketing for Lone Star Hunts. He holds a PhD in Military History with a focus on the Vietnam War (brown water navy), U.S. Navy since Inception, the Civil War, and Early Modern Europe. He enjoys reading Philosophy and novels by Jack Carr and Nelson DeMille. He is a lever action man in an AR-15 world. Follow him on X: @awrhawkins. You can sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.