The Trace says the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division has escalated Second Amendment enforcement, filing 10 lawsuits in the past year and pressing cities and states over gun permitting and restrictions.
According to The Trace’s analysis, the division’s Second Amendment section has filed 10 lawsuits, launched one investigation, and reached one settlement in the last year. The publication attributes the litigation to alleged state and local practices that burden the right to keep and bear arms.
Where the disputes are, per The Trace
The Trace reports three suits in Los Angeles, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and Minnesota focus on delays in processing gun permit applications. In Denver, Washington, D.C., and Virginia, the division is described as challenging restrictions on semiautomatic rifles.
The analysis also says the DOJ is seeking to overturn Colorado’s limits on ammunition magazine capacity, California’s ban on pistols deemed susceptible to machine-gun conversion, and Montgomery County, Maryland’s prohibition on carrying guns in public.
The Trace further reports that the division sued San Jose, California, alleging the city’s approximately $1,600 application fee for gun-carry permits is exorbitant.
Criticism quoted by The Trace
Stanford law professor John Donohue is quoted by The Trace calling the federal effort “disquieting,” saying it pressures state and local governments to abandon what he describes as reasonable measures and that the initiatives are burdening efforts to reduce gun violence.
Pushback from the source article’s author
The author of the source post disputes Donohue’s view, arguing that the challenged laws ban commonly owned firearms and magazines, impose week-long delays on purchases, and force carry applicants to pay large fees and wait months. The post’s author also argues that calling a $1,600 concealed-carry application fee “reasonable” is unacceptable and claims homicides are at their lowest level since at least 1950, with violent crime trending down. These assertions are the author’s and are not independently verified here.
What we can and can’t confirm from this post
This summary relies on how The Trace’s analysis is characterized in the source text. We have not reviewed the underlying court filings or crime statistics referenced by the post’s author.
