Denver has for decades impinged upon the Second Amendment rights of its residents.
Since 1989, the city has had a so-called “assault weapons” law on the books that now prohibits the carriage, storage, possession, manufacture, and sale of “any semiautomatic pistol or centerfire rifle, either of which have a fixed or detachable magazine with a capacity of more than fifteen rounds” and “any semiautomatic shotgun with a folding stock or a magazine capacity of more than six rounds.”
‘The Constitution is not a suggestion.’
According to Denver’s Code of Ordinances, the city council that initially advanced the ban determined that the use of “assault weapons poses a threat to the health, safety and security of all citizens” in the city and that restrictions on law-abiding Americans’ access to such firearms were both “reasonable and necessary.”
The Trump Justice Department demanded in a letter last week that the city repeal the ban, underscoring that it is unconstitutional. Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon of the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division said that failure to comply would likely trigger a lawsuit.
On Monday, the city’s attorney, Miko Brown, wrote back to Dhillon, calling the request “baseless, irresponsible, and a clear overreach of the federal government’s power.”
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Democrat Denver Mayor Mike Johnston chimed in, characterizing the DOJ’s effort to restore Denverites’ rights as intimidation and claiming that the ban “has stood for 37 years because it works, it saves lives, and it reflects the values of our community.”
Democrat Councilwoman Serena Gonzales-Gutierrez joined the chorus of fearmongerers, stating both that the Trump administration was trying to deprive students and families of critical “protections” and that “assault weapons take lives — that’s what they’re made for.”
On Tuesday, the DOJ filed a lawsuit with the stated intention of vindicating “the rights of Denver citizens whose rights have been — and are continuing to be — violated.”
“The Constitution is not a suggestion and the Second Amendment is not a second-class right,” acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said in a statement. “Denver’s ban on commonly owned semi-automatic rifles directly violates the right to bear arms.”
Citing the standard for applying the Second Amendment outlined in the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark ruling in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association Inc. v. Bruen, the government’s complaint asserts that the “Ordinance is presumptively unconstitutional” and that the City of Denver “will not be able to rebut this presumption.”
After noting that the Second Amendment protects firearms “typically possessed by law-abiding citizens for lawful purposes that are in ‘common use’ today” — a protection affirmed by the Supreme Court’s decision in District of Columbia v. Heller — the complaint explains that there are at least 28 million AR-style semiautomatic rifles presently in circulation and tens of millions of law-abiding AR-style-rifle owners in the country.
In addition to the numerousness and common use of such weapons, the DOJ’s complaint shreds the notion that AR-15-type rifles are the go-to choice for criminals.
When making this point, the DOJ highlighted FBI data showing that whereas there were 364 homicides known to have been committed with rifles of any type in 2019, 6,368 homicides were committed with handguns, 1,476 were committed with knives or other cutting instruments, 600 were committed with hands and feet, and 397 were committed with blunt objects.
Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon of the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division stated, “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.”
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