The DOJ’s Civil Rights Division amended its lawsuit against Washington, DC Thursday, broadening it so as not only to target the District’s AR-15 ban but its suppressor ban as well.
Breitbart News reported the initial lawsuit in December 2025, noting that it was directed toward the District’s “restrictive AR-15 gun controls.” The New York Times noted that the DOJ claimed the controls that target AR-15s and similar rifles via an “assault weapons” ban are “based on little more than cosmetics, appearance, or the ability to attach accessories.”
On May 14, 2026, the Civil Rights Division amended the complaint, zeroing in on DC’s suppressor ban, too.
The complaint says: “D.C. Code § 22–4514(a) bans firearm suppressors (which it calls ‘appliance[s] for causing the firing of any firearm to be silent or intended to lessen or muffle the noise of the firing of any firearms’). But suppressors are also in common use by law-abiding Americans and categorically banning them violates the Second Amendment.”
They noted that suppressors are regulated under the National Firearms Act (NFA), yet the city of D.C. goes beyond such regulation by actually banning them.
Moreover, the DOJ claimed DC’s suppressor ban cannot survive the Bruen (2022) test:
Applying the Bruen framework to the District’s ban of suppressors, at the plain text step, “the Second Amendment extends, prima facie, to all instruments that constitute bearable arms, even those that were not in existence at the time of the founding.” …This includes all “modern instruments that facilitate armed self-defense.” …Suppressors fall within this category. Therefore, suppressors are presumptively protected.
The DOJ added, “…The District cannot rebut the presumption of unconstitutionality, because there is no historical tradition analogous to a ban on an arm in common use.”
Breitbart News reported that the DOJ filed a lawsuit against Denver’s “assault weapons” ban on May 5, 2026, and filed suit against Colorado’s ban on magazines holding more than 15 rounds on May 6, 2026.
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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