The Supreme Court’s Bruen (2022) ruling was key to the preliminary injunction secured by the NRA against Virginia’s “assault weapons” and magazine ban.
Ironically, it was key to SCOTUS’s 9-0 ruling in Hemani (2026) and again in the 6-3 ruling in Wolford (2026).
In Hemani, SCOTUS ruled against the prosecution of Ali Hemani for being a marijuana user in possession of a firearm and in Wolford SCOTUS ruled against concealed carry gun controls enacted by Hawaii post-Bruen.
Bruen requires gun controls to be challenged by a two-step test, the fist step of which is to test whether the control aligns with regulatory tradition in the U.S. The second step is to test whether the control has historicity on its side.
But Bruen impacts rulings at lower courts as well.
In Santolla v. Katz, the case in which the NRA secured a preliminary injunction against Virginia’s “assault weapons” and 15-plus round magazine ban, Washington County Circuit Judge Jeffrey Campbell used the Bruen framework and found the gun controls were not up to the test.
Courthouse News Service reported that Campbell rejected Commonwealth arguments that the controls are aimed at firearms “the government has traditionally regulated.” That means the Commonwealth failed test one of the two-test Bruen process.
He then “rejected the commonwealth’s attempts to point to historical analogs justifying the bans.” That means the Commonwealth also failed test two of the two-test Bruen process.
As a result, Campbell granted a preliminary injunction, applicable to the “Virginia State Police and the localities of Washington County, Chesterfield County, Frederick County, York County, Giles County, and Chesapeake.”
Campbell’s ruling came four days after Gun Owners of America secured a temporary injunction blocking the Virginia State Police from enforcing the ban.
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 [email protected].
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