VA AWB Lawsuit (Fusaro)

Last night, I received the following email from NRA director Dennis Fusaro, regarding the Virginia assault weapon ban and a lawsuit challenging it. I’ve read the lawsuit, and I’m impressed. It stays out of federal court. And that’s what 2A needs to start thinking about. The feds are against us, in all branches, even the judiciary. We must take our fight to the states. It’s the only chance we have.

Plaintiffs challenge these prohibitions solely under the militia clause of Article I, Section 13 of the Constitution of Virginia. They do not rest their case on the Second Amendment to the United
States Constitution, nor on the individual right to keep and bear arms also embodied in Article I, Section 13. Their argument is simpler and more fundamental: the militia clause guarantees the
existence of a “well regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained to arms.” That guarantee is self-executing. It necessarily presupposes that the body of the people may acquire
and possess the arms with which they must be trained. The General Assembly cannot, consistent with that guarantee, prohibit the body of the people from acquiring the very weapons with which they must be prepared to serve as that militia.

The standard for identifying constitutionally protected militia arms follows from the text of
Article I, Section 13 itself. A “well regulated militia” must be effective. It must be “composed of the body of the people.” It must be “trained to arms.” And it must be capable of serving as “the proper, natural, and safe defense of a free state.” These are not aspirational phrases; they are constitutional commands. The arms that the body of the people must possess are those suitable for militia service—arms whose nature and purpose make them capable of contributing to the common defense. In every era, this has meant the weapons that bear a functional relationship to those issued to the organized military forces of the Commonwealth and the nation. The semi- automatic centerfire rifles and pistols, and the standard-capacity magazines banned by the Act are precisely such weapons: they are the civilian analogs of the standard service rifles issued to the Virginia National Guard and the active-duty armed forces of the United States. The General Assembly’s implicit concession that law-enforcement officers need these very weapons (and are
therefore exempted from the Act) only confirms the point.
Plaintiffs seek a declaratory judgment that the Act violates Article I, Section 13 of the Constitution of Virginia, and both a preliminary and permanent injunction against its enforcement.

And the response is, here.

Plaintiffs are likely to succeed on the merits because the assault weapons ban is indefensibly broad,