WASHINGTON — On May 14, the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division, led by AAG Harmeet Dhillon, amended its complaint against Washington, D.C.’s “assault weapons” and “high capacity” magazine bans to include a challenge on its suppressor ban.
This marks the first time that the Department of Justice has ever affirmatively challenged bans related to suppressors/silencers. It also begs an important question: will the Department of Justice change its posture in other cases where it is defending suppressor bans, specifically, those challenging the governing law, the National Firearms Act of 1934?
The 15-page amended complaint was submitted by both Harmeet K. Dhillon, Assistant Attorney General Civil Rights Division, and Barry K. Arrington, Acting Chief Second Amendment Section, whose stated mission is to “ensure that law-abiding American citizens may responsibly possess, carry, and use firearms.”
The new addition to the lawsuit addresses the district’s ban on suppressors under D.C. Code Section 22-4514(a), simply stating, “suppressors are also in common use by law-abiding Americans and categorically banning them violates the Second Amendment.”
The Second Amendment Section brought the lawsuit against D.C. in December of 2025. The district lost a separate case challenging its magazine possession ban in March of this year. U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro aggressively defended the ban and asked the appellate court to rehear the case, which it agreed to do.
The actions of Pirro, and other DOJ lawyers under the Bondi era, pit the efforts of two factions against each other: one section which is aggressively defending gun control laws, and another group actively working to litigate against such laws.
For example, under Bondi, in United States v. Peterson (the case challenging the regulation of suppressors under the NFA), the DOJ stated, “The NFA regulation at issue does not target ordinary firearms such as handguns but only nonessential firearm accessories that are uniquely adaptable to criminal misuse. Law-abiding citizens remain free to possess suppressors so long as they register them.”
Bondi stepped down as attorney general on April 2, and was replaced by Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, under whose watch the ATF rolled out its most comprehensive reform package of gun laws in the history of the agency. Blanche seems to have set a very different tone, pace and focus, compared to his predecessor. Now more than ever, it’s accurate to say that this is the most pro-Second Amendment DOJ in history.
