This week, we saw a Virginia judge issue a stay that enshrines his previous statewide injunction against all enforcement of the AR-15 ban until the Supreme Court of the United States finishes its AR-15 ban case. That raises the possibility that, if you believe SCOTUS is going to strike down all AR bans, Virginia’s ban is effectively over. But, in theory, the state’s Attorney General could keep fighting in hopes of getting the lower court injunctions overturned or stayed to bring back enforcement.

His office hasn’t answered our repeated questions on whether he plans to do that. However, we have some new insight from filings in one of the other cases against the ban. And it appears to clear things up.

Meanwhile, up in Connecticut, the fight over age restrictions on gun ownership is alive and well. As Contributing Writer Jake Fogleman explains (before he heads off to law school!) the lack of action from SCOTUS has left a void lower courts are trying to fill. He lays out the ways they’ve differed from one another.

Plus, George Mason University law professor Ilya Somin gives a pro-gun critique of the Bruen test on the podcast. And Jake and I discuss how his new life as a (coincidentally) George Mason University law student will impact his contributions to The Reload. Congratulations on the new opportunity and phase of life, Jake!

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A pair of AK-47s on sale at a Virginia gun store / Stephen Gutowski

Analysis: Is the Virginia AR-15 Ban Fight Already Over? [Member Exclusive]
By Stephen Gutowski

A state judge effectively froze the legal battle over Virginia’s “assault firearms” and “high-capacity” magazine ban this week. But filings from a sister case provide further insight into whether the fight is actually over for now.

On Wednesday, Washington County Circuit Judge Jeffrey L. Campbell issued a stay enshrining his statewide preliminary injunction against enforcement of the law until the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) decides its own “assault weapons” case next year. That puts Santolla v. Katz on ice for the foreseeable future–unless Virginia officials decide to appeal.

The most recent filings in Santolla‘s sister case, Crump v. Katz, show where state officials are on that question and how much their view has changed in a few short weeks.

Back on June 21st, Lancaster County Circuit Judge John Martin issued a preliminary injunction blocking the Virginia State Police from enforcing the “assault firearms” ban. On June 29th, Judge Campbell followed up with a similar ruling.

“Because the newly enacted Firearms Ban and Magazine Ban would likely run afoul of the protections of the Second Amendment with respect to the types of firearms and components the Plaintiffs possess as enunciated in both Heller and Bruen, I find that the Plaintiffs are likely to prevail on the merits of their claims,” Campbell wrote in his first order in Santolla v. Katz.

On July 8th, after the law went into effect, Judge Campbell took the extra step of expanding his initial injunction. He said the initial injunctions were too limited to get at the “complete relief” sought by the plaintiffs.

“[T]he Court now finds that to afford complete relief to the Plaintiffs herein, the injunction imposed by the Court’s prior ruling shall be extended to statewide application and enjoin all law enforcement agencies of the Commonwealth and its localities,” Judge Campbell wrote in his later Santolla v. Katz order.

Attorney General Jay Jones (D.) has continually argued the ban is constitutional at the state and federal level. He’s repeatedly said the state would defend it by all means necessary.

“We will continue to vigorously defend Virginia’s assault weapons ban and magazine capacity restrictions and uphold the laws designed to keep Virginians safe,” Jones said in a statement to The Reload in June.

A few weeks after SCOTUS took up its AR-15 ban case, he did tell a Lynchburg, Virginia news station he was open to a stay in light of that.

“The United States Supreme Court is reviewing challenges involving assault weapons bans that could directly inform these cases,” he told WSET when Campbell’s statewide injunction went into effect on July 21st. “Staying the four pending lawsuits will support the equal and fair application of the law and prevent conflicting outcomes.”

But his office hasn’t responded to repeated questions from The Reload about its litigation plans since then. It wouldn’t say whether it wanted the stay to restore enforcement of the law. A July 20th filing from the state in Crump v. Katz does seem to answer that question.

“[W]e cannot agree to bind individuals that are not a party to this case. However, given the statewide injunction in Washington County, I do not believe you need to seek that from this Court,” Gretchen Nygaard, Deputy Attorney General for civil litigation, wrote in an email to Crump’s lawyers. “I can inform you that we have made this same representation to all Plaintiffs in these pending cases–including that we will not be appealing the Washington County injunction during the pendency of any stay.”

Nygaard agreed to allow the stay to remain in place through the totality of the SCOTUS case. Her email is backed up by a recent statement from one of the lawyers in the Santolla case as well.

“We agreed to the Attorney General’s request to stay the progression of our case, with the injunction remaining in place banning the enforcement of the gun ban bills, ONLY when the Va. AG agreed with us that the Stay Order would clearly state that the current injunction applies STATEWIDE — protecting all citizens and all FFL’s — without exception,” Republican state senator Bill Stanley, who is representing the Santolla plaintiffs, said in a social media post.

Of course, that doesn’t mean there will be no action in the case until SCOTUS delivers its decision. For one, the Crump plaintiffs want Judge Martin to issue an order ensuring anyone buying the banned guns during this injunction period is legally protected even if the injunctions are eventually overturned–a potential issue we’ve highlighted recently.

“Further demonstrating the need for a final judgment as opposed to an open-ended stay, it is far from clear whether a temporary injunction protects against future enforcement for past conduct that occurred during the injunction’s pendency, should the present injunction ever be dissolved or otherwise vacated,” they wrote in their July 20th filing. “In fact, government counsel refused to disavow future prosecutions of violations Defendant is currently enjoined from pursuing.”

The Crump plaintiffs also want their injunction expanded to cover all Virginia law enforcement as the Santolla plaintiffs got. Plaintiffs in both cases still want a final ruling on the merits, too.

So, while there is still litigating to do and there’s some chance the plaintiffs could lose on the merits in the higher Virginia courts, the state appears content to leave AR-15s and other “assault firearms” on shelves while the legal fight unfolds and SCOTUS weighs in. Since nearly all experts agree SCOTUS is likely to rule AR-15 bans unconstitutional, that formulation likely means the fight is practically over, and AR-15s won’t ever come back off Virginia shelves again. At least, barring any big surprises.

Certainly, gun-rights activists are confident that’s the direction things are headed.

“So gun stores, throw open your doors and sell these lawful firearms, and you patriots— boldly go through those doors and support these great local businesses and exercise your 2nd Amendment rights!” Stanley said in his post. “Victory has been achieved, and your Liberty is still alive and well here in Virginia.”

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Podcast: A Pro-Gun Critique of the SCOTUS Second Amendment Test (Ft. GMU Professor Ilya Somin) [Member Early Access]
By Stephen Gutowski

We’ve looked at the Supreme Court’s upcoming Second Amendment case against AR-15 bans with the lawyer who helped craft the Court’s view of gun rights and with a professor who is a prominent critic of that view from the left. This week, we’re doing the same with a pro-gun critic of the Court’s test.

That critic is Cato Institute scholar and George Mason University law professor Ilya Somin. Ever since the Supreme Court handed down a new Second Amendment test in New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen, most gun-rights advocates have been happy with the outcome of the cases where the Court has applied it. But there is a contingent of pro-gun lawyers and professors who’ve disputed whether it’s a good precedent.

Somin argued that Bruen‘s reliance on history and tradition creates a lot of grey areas in the law. He said it is “too flabby” as it stands now, and leaves too much wiggle room for judges to impose their own preferences. He noted that liberal critics of the Bruen test have some valid critiques, but where they worry the test will be used to restrict government action, he worries it will be used to restrict Second Amendment rights.

He said he’s largely agreed with the outcome of the most recent Second Amendment cases at the Supreme Court, but worried what might come in future cases–especially if the balance of the Court moves left. Somin argued for what he considers a more straightforward test based around the original meaning of the Second Amendment. He argued history could inform that meaning, but he said that the existence of historical laws that contradict that meaning shouldn’t mean those laws take precedence over the meaning itself.

You can listen to the show on your favorite podcasting app or by clicking here. Video of the episode is available on our YouTube channel. An auto-generated transcript is here. Reload Members get access on Sunday, as always. Everyone else can listen on Monday.

Plus, Contributing Writer Jake Fogleman and I discuss a sweeping new ruling out of Connecticut, where a federal judge upheld the state’s handgun restrictions for 18-20-year-olds shortly after the Supreme Court declined to address the issue. We also cover a new stay order in the state litigation against Virginia’s AR-15 ban, which will keep the ban blocked until the Supreme Court hands down its “assault weapon” ban decision.

Audio here. Video here.

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A handgun on display at the 2025 NRA Annual Meeting / Stephen Gutowski

Analysis: Fight Over Guns for Under-21s is Alive and Well as SCOTUS Ignores Circuit Split [Member Exclusive]
By Jake Fogleman

When the Supreme Court declined to hear several cases dealing with gun rights for adults under 21 last month, the justices opted to leave unmended one of the biggest splits in post-Bruen litigation. Now, new lower courts are joining the fray.

In a new 76-page merits opinion, a Connecticut judge last week issued one of the most comprehensive decisions concerning gun-control restrictions on 18-to-20-year-olds to date. In the case Succow v. Blanche, US District Judge Sarala Nagala addressed restrictions in both state and federal law and touched on virtually every facet of young adult Second Amendment jurisprudence that have split various federal appellate courts, including purchase, carry, and possession bans.

Notably, Nagala upheld them all.

“Having considered all the admissible testimony of the witnesses and all the admissible documentary evidence, the Court finds that the State and Federal Handgun Restrictions do not violate Plaintiffs’ Second Amendment or Fourteenth Amendment rights, as they are consistent with this Nation’s history and tradition of firearms regulation,” she wrote.

Specifically, Judge Nagala upheld the collection of federal statutes that together ban licensed firearm dealers from selling pistols to adults younger than 21. She also upheld Connecticut’s state laws that ban all pistol sales to the same age group, including private transfers, and also ban 18-to-20-year-olds from even possessing or carrying an otherwise lawfully procured handgun.

Though such an outcome for each individual restriction is not unprecedented among lower court judges, it is the first to be so all-encompassing, something Nagala herself acknowledged while noting the sweeping nature of Connecticut’s restrictions on young adults.

“While the Connecticut Framework’s constitutionality is a matter of first impression in this Circuit, a number of Circuits post-Bruen have considered challenges to comparable state laws restricting the sale, possession, and/or carrying of handguns by individuals under the age of twenty-one, reaching various conclusions as to the constitutionality of such laws,” she wrote. “None of these circuit-level decisions have addressed the constitutionality of state laws that prohibit both the sale/purchase and the possession/carrying of handguns by those under the age of twenty-one, however.”

That all-encompassing ruling affecting the Second Amendment rights for young adults was only made possible by the Supreme Court’s refusal to take up one or more of the nearly half-dozen cases in its pipeline considering each of the very same issues at play in the Succow case, allowing Judge Nagala to effectively throw in her lot with one side of the open circuit split on each issue.

The federal handgun restrictions alone, for instance, have seen competing rulings and rationales from the Fourth and Fifth Circuits. A unanimous Fifth Circuit panel in January 2025 struck down the federal restrictions, in a ruling that the Justice Department later declined to appeal, after rejecting Reconstruction-era analogues as justification for the modern ban.

“The federal government has presented scant evidence that eighteen-to-twenty-year-olds’ firearm rights during the founding-era were restricted in a similar manner to the contemporary federal handgun purchase ban, and its 19th-century evidence ‘cannot provide much insight into the meaning of the Second Amendment when it contradicts earlier evidence,’” Judge Edith Jones wrote in Reese v. ATF.

Just six months later, however, a divided Fourth Circuit panel came down the other way after making much of the fact that persons under the age of 21 were considered “infants” at the time of Founding and often lacked contract rights.

“The infancy doctrine imposed a severe burden on a minor’s ability to purchase goods, including firearms, during the founding era,” Judge Harvie Wilkinson wrote in McCoy v. ATF. “Because § 922(b)(1) is ‘relevantly similar’ to founding-era restrictions on the commercial sale of firearms, we are satisfied that the Second Amendment permits the law’s burden on an 18-to-20-year-old’s right to purchase a handgun.”

In the Succow ruling, Judge Nagala essentially imported that same reasoning about the “infancy doctrine” as her sole justification for upholding the federal ban.

“The Federal Framework’s prohibition on the commercial sale and delivery of handguns to individuals between the ages of eighteen and twenty is consistent with the historical inability at the Founding for minors under the age of twenty-one to enter into contracts for the sale of commercial goods, given that minors were deemed to lack appropriate judgment and discretion,” Nagala wrote. “To be sure, Founding era infancy doctrine prohibiting minors from contracting for non-essential goods is not a ‘dead ringer’ for the Federal Framework. But that is of no matter, as courts need not search in vain for such a ‘historical twin,’ when there exists a sufficient analogue that ‘comport[s] with the principles underlying the Second Amendment.’”

Unlike the federal ban, the legal landscape for state-based age restrictions is less clear-cut. The en banc Eleventh Circuit, for instance, upheld Florida’s total gun sales ban to those under 21 in a March 2025 ruling that relied heavily on the infancy doctrine as well. However, a three-judge Tenth Circuit panel just four months prior upheld Colorado’s similar law after determining that commercial firearm purchases are not even covered under the Second Amendment.

“Pineda has partially met his burden at step one by demonstrating that (1) 18-to-20-year-olds fall within ‘the people,’ and (2) the arms he wishes to purchase constitute protected ‘arms,’” Judge Richard Federico wrote in RMGO v. Polis. “However, Pineda fails to prove that SB 23-169 implicates his right to ‘keep and bear’ arms, the third prong of step one. This is because SB 23-169 is presumptively lawful as a law that imposes conditions or qualifications upon the sale and purchase of arms and thus does not fall within the protections of the plain text of the Second Amendment.”

Meanwhile, both the Third and Eighth Circuits struck down bans on gun carry for 18-20-year-olds in Pennsylvania and Minnesota, respectively. Each court did so after rejecting justifications based on the infancy doctrine and Reconstruction-era analogues while emphasizing founding-era requirements that often required eighteen-year-olds to show up armed with privately-owned firearms for militia service.

“Minnesota cites common law evidence that (as minors) 18 to 20-year-olds did not have full rights. Minnesota, however, does not put forward common law analogues restricting the right to bear arms,” Judge Duane Benton wrote in Worth v. Jacobson. “Instead, Minnesota points to statutory law, such as the Militia Act of 1792 that required 18 to 20-year-olds to acquire firearms, as evidence the common law was the inverse. A mandate to acquire a firearm is hardly ‘evidence’ that one was previously prohibited from owning one.”

Judge Nagala, on the other hand, accepted late 19^th-century state laws that restricted the sale to or carry by under-21-year-olds as acceptable analogues for Connecticut’s all-encompassing ban.

“The State Defendants have placed into the record a number of Reconstruction era laws that operate to completely prohibit the possession and carrying of handguns by individuals under the age of twenty-one,” she wrote. “For example, in 1883, Wisconsin passed a total prohibition on minors, defined as individuals under the age of twenty-one, from ‘go[ing] armed’ with ‘any pistol or revolver,’ and requiring any law officer to ‘take from any minor, any pistol or revolver, found in his possession.’ That same year, Kansas passed a law making the possession of a pistol or revolver by a minor in any place a criminal misdemeanor. And Nevada, in 1885, similarly passed a law making the wearing or carrying of any ‘pistol . . . or other dangerous or deadly weapon concealed upon’ a person under the age of twenty-one a criminal misdemeanor.”

“As Defendants’ experts explained, these laws were enacted to combat the rising tide of juvenile crime and accidental shootings spurred by the increased availability of mass-produced, multi-firing, concealable handguns,” she added. “They thus serve as ‘dead ringer[s]’ for Connecticut’s current prohibitions on the carrying and possession of handguns by minors.”

Judge Nagala’s ruling is not itself precedential, but it could give rise to an eventual appeal before the Second Circuit, where yet another appellate court would have the chance to weigh whether young adults have the same constitutional rights as their older counterparts. Perhaps a Seventh Circuit court ruling will be sufficient “percolation” for the Supreme Court to consider the issue important enough to take on.

As the Succow decision makes clear, the issue isn’t going away any time soon and will need to be resolved eventually. And by the time the Court gets around to deciding whether adults under the age of 21 enjoy any protection by the Second Amendment, it will find that the lower courts have already built multiple fully developed—and fundamentally incompatible—bodies of post-Bruen law.

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That’s it for now.

I’ll talk to you all again soon.

Thank you,
Stephen Gutowski
Founder
The Reload