The U.S. Department of Justice filed a lawsuit against Denver and its police department on Tuesday, launching a direct legal challenge to the city’s longstanding ban on assault weapons, according to the Associated Press. The civil complaint, lodged in federal court, argues that Denver’s 1989 ordinance — which makes it a crime to possess semi-automatic rifles including AR-15-style firearms — violates the Second Amendment and demands that the court declare the law unconstitutional.
The suit came one day after Denver officials publicly rejected a Justice Department demand that the city stop enforcing the ban and enter negotiations to resolve the matter. Mayor Mike Johnston, speaking at a news conference Monday, delivered a sharp rebuke.
“Our answer is hell no,” Johnston said. “No, we will not roll back a common sense policy that has kept weapons of war off of these city streets for 37 years. No, we will not put first responders at greater risk every time they respond to a dangerous incident. No, we will not go back to a time when folks are worried about walking into movie theaters or grocery stores or public elementary schools.”
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, in a statement announcing the lawsuit, framed the ban as an infringement on a fundamental right. “The Constitution is not a suggestion and the Second Amendment is not a second-class right,” Blanche said. “Denver’s ban on commonly owned semi-automatic rifles directly violates the right to bear arms.”
The Justice Department’s complaint describes AR-15-style rifles as “ordinary semiautomatic rifles” used for lawful purposes including self-defense, and notes that at least 16 million people in the country own such firearms. Denver police Chief Ron Thomas, who joined the department the year the ban was adopted, told the AP the ordinance has been a key tool in reducing gun violence. Of 2,100 guns recovered in the city last year, fewer than 2% were assault-style weapons, Thomas said.
The administration is also pressuring Colorado over its statewide ban on large-capacity ammunition magazines, enacted after the 2012 Aurora movie theater mass shooting. In an April 28 letter to state officials, Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon argued that “law-abiding Americans own literally hundreds of millions of magazines identical to those banned in Colorado” and threatened to sue unless the state agrees the law is unconstitutional. Colorado’s Supreme Court upheld the magazine ban in 2020.
Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser pushed back, stating that “large-capacity magazine laws are responsible policies that decrease the deadly impacts of mass shootings and save lives.” The AP noted that Denver’s ban was enacted during a period of heightened concern over gun violence, and that the state has since endured some of the nation’s deadliest mass shootings — Columbine in 1999, the Aurora theater attack in 2012, a Boulder supermarket shooting in 2021, and a Colorado Springs LGBTQ nightclub attack in 2022 — all of which killed multiple people.