On Thursday, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) Director Robert Cekada testified before the House Oversight and Government Reform Subcommittee on Federal Law Enforcement. The hearing was titled “Privacy Protections & the Second Amendment: Examining ATF’s Relationship to the Tiahrt Amendment.”
The hearing focused on the Tiahrt Amendment, enacted as part of a 2003 DOJ appropriations bill and subsequently renewed. The amendment restricts the ATF from releasing detailed firearms trace data (such as the origin and sales chain of crime guns) to anyone outside law enforcement or prosecutors for specific criminal investigations. It prohibits the use of that data for academic research, civil lawsuits against gun manufacturers or dealers, or by cities, states, or the public. It also limits requirements for gun dealers to submit regular inventory data. The purpose of the amendment is to protect the privacy of lawful gun owners, dealers, undercover officers, and informants, while preventing data misuse that could endanger people or support gun-control lawsuits.
Chairman Clay Higgins (R-La.) expressed concern about the ATF’s inconsistent adherence to the amendment and Second Amendment protections. He called for an investigation into how trace data is being used. These concerns followed the ATF’s accidental release of unredacted data to Gun Owners of America (GOA) in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. After the release, the ATF attempted to retrieve the information from the gun-rights group. GOA refused to delete the documents, prompting the government to seek a restraining order to prevent their disclosure. The ATF and GOA are currently in court over the matter.
ATF Director Robert Cekada was the sole witness at the hearing. He was confirmed by a 59-39 vote in the Senate on April 29. The hearing revealed a clear partisan divide. Republicans focused on Second Amendment protections and alleged ATF overreach. Democrats emphasized “gun violence prevention.” Some Democrats, including Squad member Ayanna Pressley (D-MA), suggested that Cekada and other regulators were influenced by the “gun lobby.”
“The gun lobby is controlling the regulators, while our communities are paying the price,” Pressley said. “Burying loved ones and raising children in fear — the shame of it all.”
The biggest point of contention was the need for the Tiahrt Amendment. Chairman Higgins strongly defended the law and highlighted past ATF violations, especially during the Biden era, involving mishandling and data leaks. He called for stronger enforcement and possible permanent codification of the amendment. Ranking Member Summer Lee (D-PA) pushed back, criticizing the hearing for prioritizing gun industry privacy over public safety and attacking the Trump administration’s regulatory rollbacks and closure of anti-gun programs.
Director Cekada acknowledged past failures by the ATF in preventing the disclosure of protected data but said new safeguards have been implemented to avoid future accidental releases. He blamed software issues and employee errors for the past leaks. His assurances did not fully ease the committee members’ concerns, particularly regarding the existence of roughly a billion digitized records from out-of-business dealers stored at the ATF’s West Virginia facility.
Director Cekada pushed back on the notion that these records constitute a database or national registry.
Democrats criticized Cekada over the ATF’s newly revealed 34 rules intended to reduce the burden on the gun industry and American gun owners. He defended the changes, noting that none of them compromise public safety. Director Cekada emphasized that the ATF’s mission is to target violent criminals, citing more than 8,700 arrests since January 2025. He also highlighted major improvements in NFA/eForm processing times and the replacement of the ATF’s former “zero tolerance” policy for Federal Firearms Licensees (FFLs) with a fairer enforcement approach.
In a notable exchange, Rep. Eli Crane (R-AZ) asked Cekada what the Second Amendment means. While past ATF directors have dodged the question, Cekada answered directly. He acknowledged that the Second Amendment is about defending against tyranny, a welcome statement to many American gun owners. Rep. Crane also inquired about the case of Tate Adamiak.
Tate Adamiak should never have been imprisoned over collectible items and parts kits that ATF improperly classified as prohibited weapons.
Being a collector is not a crime, and this abuse of the NFA must be reversed.
Mr. Adamiak, a decorated Navy sailor, was convicted of NFA violations after selling a parts kit to an undercover ATF agent. He had originally purchased the kit from GunBroker. He was also convicted of possessing an RPG after buying a demilled RPG at a California flea market. The ATF had welded the hole cut into the side of the RPG closed and installed a fire control unit to reactivate it. The U.S. Attorney’s office then charged Adamiak as if he possessed a functioning RPG.
Director Cekada said the ATF is working on the case and is in contact with Adamiak’s attorneys. He noted that the Department of Justice is reviewing the matter, which is currently before the U.S. Supreme Court. Adamiak is scheduled for a rehearing in June.
Mr. Crump is an NRA instructor and a constitutional activist. John has written about firearms, interviewed people from all walks of life, and on the Constitution. John lives in Northern Virginia with his wife and sons, follow him on X at @right2bear, or at www.crumpy.com.
Virginia gun-rights groups sued over Spanberger’s new assault weapons ban, magazine limits, and public carry restrictions affecting common firearms. img Duncan Johnson
Virginia’s new so-called “assault firearm” ban is already headed to court. A newly filed complaint in Lancaster County argues that the Commonwealth’s new laws do far more than target politically demonized rifles. According to the plaintiffs, the new regime criminalizes the future sale, purchase, manufacture, transfer, and even public carry of a broad class of common firearms and standard-capacity magazines that ordinary Virginians lawfully own and use every day.
The lawsuit was brought by AmmoLand contributor John Crump, Gun Owners of America, Gun Owners Foundation, and Virginia Citizens Defense League against Virginia State Police Superintendent Col. Jeffrey S. Katz in his official capacity. The complaint seeks declaratory and injunctive relief against Virginia’s new “assault firearm” and “large capacity ammunition feeding device” restrictions, which Gov. Abigail Spanberger signed into law on May 14, 2026, with an effective date of July 1, 2026.
Virginia Democrats have crossed the line from punishing criminal conduct to criminalizing the way law-abiding citizens buy, own, transfer, and carry ordinary firearms. The plaintiffs argue the state is trying to ban guns and magazines overwhelmingly chosen by Americans for lawful purposes.
Gun Owners of America Senior Vice President Erich Pratt put it bluntly: “Governor Spanberger has declared war on the rights of all Virginians. By banning the most commonly-owned firearms and standard-capacity magazines in America, the state is disarming law-abiding citizens, while doing absolutely nothing to stop violent crime.”
Chris Stone, Director of State Affairs for Gun Owners of America, was equally direct: “Governor Spanberger and the anti-gun Democrats in the General Assembly are proud to openly violate the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding Virginians, and their glee is an afront to the motto and ethos of this commonwealth. Gun Owners of America and our friends at Virginia Citizens Defense League look forward to challenging them in court.”
The complaint is brought under Article I, Section 13 of the Virginia Constitution, not the federal Second Amendment. That provision says “the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed,” and the plaintiffs argue Virginia’s constitutional protection is at least as strong as the federal one.
Virginia courts should apply the same text-and-history framework laid down in Bruen and Heller, and under that framework, a ban on arms in common use cannot stand.
The firearms and magazines Virginia is targeting are not fringe items. They are in common use across the country. The complaint leans on modern case law and even the U.S. Supreme Court’s own recognition that AR-15 rifles are widely legal, widely purchased by ordinary consumers, and that “the AR-15 is the most popular rifle in the country.” It also cites cases recognizing that magazines holding more than 15 rounds number in the hundreds of millions and come standard with many of America’s most popular firearms.
In other words, Virginia Democrats and Gov. Spanberger are going after firearms and magazines that sit at the center of ordinary American gun ownership.
The complaint challenges the statutory definition of “assault firearm,” the ban on importing, selling, manufacturing, purchasing, or transferring those firearms, the separate prohibition on certain sales, the public-carry restrictions, the ban on so-called “large capacity ammunition feeding devices,” and the forfeiture provisions that allow the Commonwealth to seize prohibited items. It also challenges several of the law’s terms as unconstitutionally vague under Virginia’s due process protections.
For example, the complaint argues that the law bans certain semiautomatic centerfire rifles and pistols “with” magazine capacities over 15 rounds, but never clearly explains what “with” means in practice.
Does a handgun become an “assault firearm” only when a larger magazine is inserted, or does mere proximity count?
The complaint says John Crump and gun owners do not know whether possessing a larger-capacity magazine near one of their firearms could expose them to prosecution. That is not how serious laws are supposed to work. That is how laws are written when the real target is lawful ownership itself.
The lawsuit also attacks feature-based terms such as a grip that “protrudes conspicuously” and a barrel “shroud” that partially or completely encircles the barrel. The complaint argues those terms are so imprecise that ordinary Virginians are left guessing what the law actually covers, while police and prosecutors are handed broad discretion to decide later.
Virginia’s new definitions are broad enough to reach handguns, AR-style pistols, tactical shotguns, detachable-magazine shotguns, firearms capable of accepting belt-fed devices, and ordinary magazines that exceed the state’s arbitrary 15-round limit.
The complaint specifically points to the way the law reaches centerfire pistols with magazines over 15 rounds, meaning that guns many Americans would regard as standard defensive handguns can now be swept into Virginia’s “assault firearm” category.
That connects directly to one of the most alarming parts of the case: public carry.
The complaint says a separate measure, SB727, folds in the new definition of “assault firearm” and makes it unlawful to carry such a firearm on public streets, roads, alleys, sidewalks, rights-of-way, parks, and “any other place of whatever nature that is open to the public.”
According to the plaintiffs, that means not only public property but also private property open to the public, including stores, shopping centers, event venues, and even gun stores. The complaint further argues there is no meaningful exemption for ordinary Virginians who simply want to bear arms for self-defense.
This law does not merely block future sales of common arms. According to the complaint, it also strips ordinary citizens of the ability to carry many of them in public at all.
John Crump is a law-abiding Virginian, a concealed handgun permit holder, a firearms journalist, a YouTuber, and an AmmoLand contributor who regularly reviews firearms and magazines. The complaint says his work includes receiving and testing products from federally licensed manufacturers and dealers, including products the new statutes classify as prohibited.
Crump says he wants to buy or receive a range of now-covered firearms and magazines, including a KelTec PR-5.7 pistol, a Daniel Defense DDM4 V7 rifle, Magpul PMAG magazines, Glock 17 magazines, a PSA AR-style pistol with a brace, a Benelli M4 Tactical shotgun, a Derya DY12 shotgun, parts for a belt-fed build, and components to assemble a rifle from a stripped lower. The complaint also says he wants to engage in routine conduct such as private sales, gifts, and public carry, but will refrain because of the credible threat of prosecution once the law takes effect.
Crump also framed the fight in personal and historical terms, saying: “Virginia has a deep history of firearms ownership. Our constitution is strong on the right to keep and bear arms. The framers of the Constitution would be horrified at these Draconian laws. My family has lived in the Commonwealth since before the founding of the country. It is my duty, as a Virginian, to fight back.”
The organizational plaintiffs also allege direct harm. GOA and VCDL say they conduct raffles, events, range days, and other activities involving the kinds of firearms and magazines Virginia now seeks to outlaw. GOA further says its Caliber Club network includes gun stores and ranges that will face restricted markets and lost business. This is not just a lawsuit about one man being denied one purchase. It is a challenge to a legal regime that the plaintiffs say harms gun owners, gun clubs, advocacy groups, and lawful commerce across the Commonwealth.
Virginia does not get to dodge constitutional scrutiny by pretending this law only bans sales, purchases, or transfers rather than possession. The plaintiffs argue that the right to keep and bear arms necessarily includes the right to acquire arms and magazines in the first place.
A right that exists only in theory, but cannot be exercised through lawful purchase, transfer, training, or ordinary use, is not much of a right at all.
That argument goes to the heart of the modern gun-control playbook. When they cannot immediately confiscate what people already own, gun-control activists try to strangle the supply chain, kill off lawful transfer, block future acquisition, and wait for the right to wither. This lawsuit calls that bluff.
The complaint also highlights the irrationality of the statutory scheme. It asks the court to clarify whether multi-caliber magazines remain legal if they hold 15 or fewer rounds of one caliber but more than 15 of another. Plaintiffs seek a declaration that Virginians may still manufacture magazines from raw materials, kits, and component parts because the statute bans import, sale, barter, transfer, and purchase, but not manufacture. There are also questions whether a shotgun provision covering weapons with “one of the following characteristics” actually reaches shotguns that have more than one such characteristic.
Those arguments may sound technical, but they expose a truth: lawmakers who know little about firearms keep writing laws that govern them anyway. The result is predictable — confusion for honest citizens, selective leverage for the state, and yet another pile of legal bills for taxpayers.
The penalties are no joke, either. The complaint says violations are generally Class 1 misdemeanors punishable by up to 12 months in jail and a fine of up to $2,500, with firearms and magazines subject to forfeiture. It also points to related consequences, including restrictions affecting firearm possession, concealed handgun permit eligibility, and dealer employment. That is a serious hammer to bring down on people whose real “crime” is wanting to buy the same types of guns and magazines millions of Americans already own.
At bottom, this case asks whether Virginia courts will treat Article I, Section 13 of the state constitution as a real guarantee or as an empty decoration. If the courts mean what the Constitution says, the plaintiffs have a powerful case. The state has labeled common firearms and standard magazines as forbidden items, criminalized ordinary transactions, extended that regime into public carry, and done it all with vague language that leaves law-abiding people guessing what they may lawfully possess or do.
Gun owners nationwide should pay close attention. This is not merely a fight over one bill. It is a fight over whether the Commonwealth may treat peaceable citizens as presumptive criminals for wanting the same arms, magazines, and carry options that Americans across most of the country still lawfully enjoy. If Virginia can get away with this, other blue-state politicians will take notes.
Government cannot erase a constitutional right by banning the common tools needed to exercise it.
Duncan Johnson is a lifelong firearms enthusiast and unwavering defender of the Second Amendment—where “shall not be infringed” means exactly what it says. A graduate of George Mason University, he enjoys competing in local USPSA and multi-gun competitions whenever he’s not covering the latest in gun rights and firearm policy. Duncan is a regular contributor to AmmoLand News and serves as part of the editorial team responsible for AmmoLand’s daily gun-rights reporting and industry coverage.
LEGO handgun toy image generated by Grok Imagine, an AI model from xAI.
“A woman in Georgia is questioning her son’s three-day suspension after school officials said the 8-year-old brought a small LEGO creation resembling a gun to class, sparking debate over zero-tolerance discipline policies for young students,” KVUE reported Sunday. “The mother said her son, who has autism and ADHD, did not threaten anyone or behave aggressively.”
It’s hardly the first time that school officials have reacted this way. It’s been going on for a long time.
In 2010, a fourth-grade boy playing with LEGOs during lunch faced suspension “over the two-inch toy gun carried by a standard policeman figure,” NBC 4 New York reported. The official position was made clear for all to heed:
Margie Feinberg, a spokeswoman for the Department of Education, told the Staten Island Advance that there is a no-tolerance policy for toy guns in schools.
“Connecticut School Calls Police After Student Builds Lego Gun,” Athlon Outdoors reported, adding:
“This is just the latest example of school students facing disciplinary action over firearms. A high school senior in Woodbridge, Conn. was suspended and arrested in March after posting a photo of an airsoft gun on Snapchat. In Ohio last year, a middle school student received a 10-day suspension for “liking” a photo of an airsoft gun on Instagram. In addition, a 16-year-old student in Alabama was expelled from school last year after she was caught with a toy water gun. Furthermore, a 12-year-old autistic boy was arrested last week for pointing an imaginary rifle at his art teacher.”
Then there was the seven-year-old “Pop Tart gun” boy in Maryland who bit a pastry in the shape of a gun and had his suspension upheld by a judge.
And AmmoLand reported on a three-year-old deaf boy in Nebraska named Hunter, forbidden to use sign language for his name because “the forefinger and middle fingers crossed and extended, slightly resembl[ed] the ASL sign for a gun, or a finger gun that children might make during a game of cops and robbers.”
Many more such examples can be found, but it’s pretty clear what’s going on and what the education establishment is teaching its charges about guns the minute it gets its hands on them. The engineered results are predictable: Ignorance begets fear and fear begets hate.
And, anti-bullying policies aside, the biggest bullies are teachers and administrators enforcing “zero tolerance” policies with no regard to common sense or the effects draconian intolerance has on young people looking to adults for cues on what to believe and how to behave.
Some states are beginning to come on board with the basics.
“Arkansas, Tennessee and Utah are the first states to enact laws that require public schools to teach children as young as 5 the basics of gun safety and how to properly store guns in the home,” U.S. News & World Report related in 2025. It’s basically avoidance stuff, “but in Arkansas, the law allows parents to opt into alternative curriculums, such as an off-campus firearm safety course that could include live guns.” (It’s still a far cry from the way things used to be, back in the days before school shootings when the Chicago Vocational High School ROTC color guard was equipped with M1s Garands, and the armory with even more.)
None of which pleases the “commonsense gun safety” groups who, in true Opposite Day fashion, object to any form of training, thereby ensuring that if children under their influence encounter an unattended firearm, exploitable tragedy will be the likely result. Meg Beauregard, policy counsel fellow at Everytown for Gun Safety, says leave the kids out of it and “pass laws that hold adults accountable, such as secure.”
Mandated ignorance extends to drawings of guns, and quotes from Growing Up in Santa Cruz show what “progressive” mothers demand as a universal rule:
Gina Grajewski, a Santa Cruz parent, agrees that no guns should be drawn in the classroom under any circumstance. “It’s my understanding that this is just a rule. No guns at school. No drawings. Period. No gun play. Period. No guns. Period,” said Grajewski, a PVUSD parent… One Santa Cruz parent, Kathy Vega, also takes the position of no gun pictures in schools. “I agree with the rules of not drawing guns or weapons at school,” she said. “If anything, we should try to educate our children not to touch guns in hopes that they will make that decision if they happen to be in a situation where they have access to one.”
What will happen is they will have no clue about basic rules of gun safety and be in no position to know what danger they are in.
Meanwhile, none of this will have any effect on budding predators who don’t need to build LEGO guns or draw them, as a “study determ[ining] the frequency, prevalence, and turnover in gang membership between ages 5 and 17 years in the United States” makes obvious.
Kids won’t learn how the same “adults” who demand ignorance on guns politically enable and make that inevitable, either. What they will learn is acting like normal kids used to in a simpler time will get them bullied, punished and ostracized by those in authority.
David Codrea is the winner of multiple journalist awards for investigating/defending the RKBA and a long-time gun owner rights advocate who defiantly challenges the folly of citizen disarmament. He blogs at “The War on Guns: Notes from the Resistance,” is a regularly featured contributor to Firearms News, and posts on Twitter: @dcodrea and Facebook.
The Justice Department is challenging Washington, D.C.’s AR-15 and suppressor bans, arguing that enforcement by MPD violates the Second Amendment and federal civil-rights law. img Duncan Johnson
The Trump Justice Department just sharpened its attack on Washington, D.C.’s gun-control regime, and this time the target is bigger than a single bad law.
In a First Amended Complaint filed May 14, 2026, the United States argues that the District of Columbia, its Metropolitan Police Department, and Acting Police Chief Jeffrey Carroll are violating the Second Amendment by enforcing local laws that ban AR-15-style rifles and suppressors. The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, asks a federal judge to declare those bans unconstitutional and block D.C. from enforcing them.
This is not another private citizen begging the courts to recognize what the Constitution already says. This is the United States government suing the District of Columbia and saying, in plain terms, that D.C.’s gun laws deprive Americans of their civil rights.
That is a major shift.
For decades, anti-gun politicians have treated the Second Amendment like a second-class right. They have banned commonly owned rifles, criminalized ordinary gun parts and accessories, buried lawful owners in registration schemes, and then acted shocked when Americans objected. D.C. has long been one of the worst offenders. This amended complaint puts that record directly in the federal government’s crosshairs.
The filing opens with the point gun owners have been making since Heller: the Second Amendment protects a pre-existing right, not a privilege handed out by politicians. DOJ cites Heller, McDonald, and Bruen to argue that law-abiding Americans have the right to possess and use arms that are in common use for lawful purposes.
That is where D.C.’s AR-15 ban runs into trouble. D.C. does not simply say, “AR-15s are banned,” at least not in the clean way some states do. Instead, the District uses its registration scheme to get the same result. Under D.C. law, a person may not possess a firearm unless it is registered with the police. Then D.C. refuses to issue registration certificates for so-called “assault weapons,” a category that includes AR-15-platform rifles.
The result is the same: possess an AR-15 in D.C., and you are treated like a criminal.
The complaint correctly attacks the loaded phrase “assault weapon” for what it is: political language, not a serious firearms term. The AR-15 is not exotic or rare. It is not some strange military artifact sitting outside the American firearms tradition. It is the most popular rifle platform in the country.
DOJ’s amended complaint leans hard into that reality. The complaint cites estimates that Americans own 20 to 30 million AR-15s. It also points to Justice Kagan’s recent observation that the AR-15 is “the most popular rifle in the country.” It then cites Justice Kavanaugh’s statement in Snope v. Brown, where he noted that because millions of Americans own AR-15s and most states allow them, challengers have a strong argument that AR-15s are protected under Heller’s common-use test.
If the Second Amendment protects arms in common use for lawful purposes, then D.C. cannot ban the most popular rifle in America just because anti-gun politicians dislike it. The Constitution does not allow local officials to veto ordinary rifle ownership with scary language and a registration trap.
The complaint also lays out why Americans own AR-style rifles. DOJ cites surveys showing they are used for recreational target shooting, home defense, hunting, defense outside the home, and competition. In other words, the exact kind of lawful purposes the Second Amendment protects.
The filing also undercuts the usual gun-control narrative that AR-15s are uniquely tied to crime. DOJ notes that FBI homicide data from 2019 showed only 364 homicides with rifles of any kind, compared with 6,368 with handguns, 1,476 with knives or cutting instruments, 600 with hands, feet, or other personal weapons, and 397 with blunt objects.
Anti-gun politicians do not want Americans to see those numbers. The numbers wreck the narrative.
D.C.’s suppressor ban gets the same treatment.
The complaint points out that suppressors are regulated under the National Firearms Act. A buyer must purchase through a licensed dealer. Submit paperwork. Provide personal information, submit fingerprints and photos. Go through an ATF background check and wait for approval before taking possession. That process is already burdensome.
D.C. goes further. It bans suppressors outright.
The District’s law refers to suppressors as devices intended to make firearms “silent” or to lessen or muffle the sound of gunfire. That language plays into Hollywood nonsense. Suppressors do not turn firearms into whisper-quiet assassin tools. They reduce noise, protect hearing, make training safer, and are commonly owned by lawful Americans across the country.
DOJ cites roughly six million registered suppressors in the United States as of April 2026. It also points to prior ATF statements that suppressors are rarely used in criminal shootings and should not be treated as a public-safety threat.
That should be obvious to anyone who understands firearms. Criminals are not lining up to pay, register, submit fingerprints, and wait on ATF paperwork to commit crimes with suppressors. Law-abiding Americans are the ones being punished by bans like D.C.’s.
The most interesting part of the amended complaint is the legal vehicle DOJ is using. The United States is suing under 34 U.S.C. § 12601, a federal civil-rights statute that allows the Attorney General to seek relief when a governmental authority or its agents engage in a pattern or practice of conduct by law enforcement officers that deprives people of constitutional rights.
That statute is usually discussed in the context of police misconduct cases. DOJ is now applying it to Second Amendment violations.
The argument is simple and powerful: MPD officers are required to enforce D.C. law. D.C. law makes it a crime to possess protected arms. When officers routinely enforce unconstitutional gun bans, they are engaging in a pattern or practice that deprives people of rights secured by the Constitution.
Gun rights are civil rights. The right to keep and bear arms is not a hobby, not a lifestyle preference, and not a local policy question for anti-gun city councils to erase. When a city criminalizes the possession of arms protected by the Second Amendment, it is not merely “regulating guns.” It is violating constitutional rights.
The complaint asks the court to declare that D.C. is a governmental authority under Section 12601, that MPD officers are law enforcement officers under that statute, and that enforcing D.C.’s laws against AR-15-style rifles and suppressors deprives citizens of their Second Amendment rights. DOJ also asks for preliminary and permanent injunctions barring D.C. from enforcing those provisions.
Washington, D.C. has already been at the center of one of the most important Second Amendment cases in American history. Heller should have ended the District’s fantasy that politicians can ban ordinary arms and call it public safety. Instead, D.C. kept pushing.
Now, the DOJ is telling the court that enough is enough. The amended complaint does not merely defend AR-15s and suppressors. It advances a broader principle: when government officials enforce gun bans that violate the Second Amendment, they are violating civil rights.
For years, anti-gun officials have acted as if the Second Amendment is the one right they can ignore without consequence. They would never tolerate a city using a registration scheme to ban unpopular books, religious items, political speech, or protest signs. But when the object is a rifle owned by millions of peaceable Americans, they suddenly discover endless patience for “local control.”
The Constitution does not work that way.
The AR-15 is in common use. Suppressors are in common use. Both are possessed by law-abiding Americans for lawful purposes. D.C.’s decision to ban them is not a policy disagreement. Like all gun control, it is a constitutional violation.
If DOJ follows this case through, it could become one of the most important Second Amendment enforcement actions in the country. Not because D.C.’s bans are uniquely clever, but because they are so familiar. The same anti-gun playbook is used across the country. Redefine common firearms as dangerous, criminalize possession, and force gun owners to spend years fighting in court.
This amended complaint turns that fight around. The United States is now arguing that enforcing those bans is itself a civil rights violation.
Good. It is about time the Second Amendment was treated that way.
Duncan Johnson is a lifelong firearms enthusiast and unwavering defender of the Second Amendment—where “shall not be infringed” means exactly what it says. A graduate of George Mason University, he enjoys competing in local USPSA and multi-gun competitions whenever he’s not covering the latest in gun rights and firearm policy. Duncan is a regular contributor to AmmoLand News and serves as part of the editorial team responsible for AmmoLand’s daily gun-rights reporting and industry coverage.
Jordan Derrick (known online as Dugan Ashley or from the YouTube channel CarniK Con), age 40, was charged in a federal criminal complaint on May 12 in the Western District of Missouri. Authorities charged him with engaging in the business of manufacturing explosive materials without a license, unlawful possession of an unregistered destructive device, and distributing information relating to the manufacture of explosives.
Derrick was a well-known figure in the firearms, reloading, and “guntuber” communities. He ran a channel called CarniK Con before leaving YouTube on March 27, 2015 (the CarniK Con channel was removed on September 7, 2017).
“Pulling the plug on CarniK Con, effective immediately,” Derrick wrote on Facebook. “Leaving Soc. Med. up, am available for hired work, [email removed]. May or may not upload the most recent video to YT at some point, but won’t be making new posts. This is probably the last one. #out”
CarniK Con is widely considered to be one of the first successful YouTube channels for gun content. He returned to YouTube a few years later, launching a podcast called Dark Light Dugan with co-hosts Dark Mavis and Light. He later left the podcast, and the YouTube channel continued with only the remaining host, Dark Mavis, before rebranding as DLD After Dark.
On September 18, 2023, he launched another YouTube channel and various other social media accounts, where he explained explosives and showed how to make them. According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Missouri, these explosive materials included detonators, nickel aminoguanidine perchlorate (NAP), ethylene glycol dinitrate (EGDN), hexamethylene triperoxide diamine (HMTD), hexamine dinitrate (HDN), Research Department eXplosive (RDX), silver acetylide double salt (SADS), trinitroxylene (TNX or R-salt), trinitrotoluene (TNT), pentaerythritol tetranitrate (PETN), aminoguanidine bicarbonate, and ammonium nitrate/nitromethane (ANNM).
One of the people who allegedly found his videos and used them to build explosives was Shamsud-Din Bahar Jabbar. Mr. Jabbar carried out an Islamist domestic terrorist attack on Bourbon Street in New Orleans, Louisiana, on New Year’s Day. Fortunately, the terrorist’s explosives did not detonate. Earlier this year, another explosion occurred at a private residence in Odessa, Missouri. The occupant of the residence told investigators that he used Derrick’s videos to make the explosives. That investigation is still ongoing.
The charges against Derrick have raised some eyebrows. He was charged with engaging in the business of manufacturing explosive materials without a license.
Commentators note that Derrick did not charge for any information on explosives. His social media platforms were not monetized, and he had no sponsors, leading many to wonder how he could be engaged in a “business” that involved no money. If convicted, this charge alone could send Derrick to federal prison for 10 years.
The second charge is unlawful possession of an unregistered destructive device. The type of device has not been disclosed. This charge could also carry a sentence of up to 10 years in prison.
The final charge is the most troubling. Mr. Derrick was charged with distributing information relating to the manufacture of explosives under 18 U.S.C. § 842(p). This law prohibits teaching, demonstrating, or distributing information on how to make or use explosives, destructive devices, or weapons of mass destruction under two conditions:
Intent: If the person distributing the information intends for it to be used to commit a federal crime of violence.
Knowledge: If the distributor knows that the recipient intends to use the information to commit a federal crime of violence.
The government will have a hard time proving “intent.” Derrick’s videos were very scientific and never called for violence. He covered the chemistry of the explosives but did not discuss their use in committing crimes. It is also unlikely that Derrick had any knowledge of Jabbar’s planned attack. If convicted on this charge, he could face up to 20 years in prison.
The last charge also raises serious First Amendment concerns. These types of recipes have long been available in local libraries through books like The Anarchist Cookbook, which can still be purchased on Amazon or downloaded via the Kindle app. Some observers believe this charge could be a trumped-up allegation used to pressure Derrick into a plea agreement.
If Mr. Derrick is convicted on all charges, he might not survive prison. He suffers from multiple sclerosis (MS), and the government would force him to leave his wife and children to fend for themselves. Friends of Derrick have launched a GiveSendGo campaign to support his legal defense fund. At the time of writing, the campaign has raised $16,000 of its $30,000 goal.
Mr. Crump is an NRA instructor and a constitutional activist. John has written about firearms, interviewed people from all walks of life, and on the Constitution. John lives in Northern Virginia with his wife and sons, follow him on X at @right2bear, or at www.crumpy.com.
Featured image generated by Grok Imagine, built by xAI.
American gun owners should be up in arms over any federal gun registration scheme. The threat of artificial intelligence only makes the danger worse.
For decades, Second Amendment supporters have warned that ATF’s growing stockpile of firearm transaction records could become the national gun registry Congress explicitly banned in 1986. ATF’s excuse has always been that its records are not searchable by a buyer’s name. That was never much comfort. In the age of AI, it is almost meaningless.
That is the warning at the center of a new Firearms Research Center paper by Del Schlangen, titled “Congress Banned a Gun Registry; AI Inference May Render the Prohibition Obsolete.” The paper argues that the long fight over ATF’s digitized firearm transaction records may already be behind the technology curve. The old question was whether ATF’s database is “searchable.” The new question is whether artificial intelligence can make that excuse irrelevant.
AmmoLand readers know the background. We have been covering ATF’s out-of-business dealer record stockpile for years, including the agency’s 920-million-plus record holdings, the digitization of those records, and the obvious concern that the Bureau is sitting on the building blocks of a national gun registry. AmmoLand previously reported that ATF acknowledged holding 920,664,765 firearm records, with almost all already scanned or digitized.
That number has only become harder to dismiss. In 2026, AmmoLand covered Senate testimony warning that ATF has nearly one billion firearm records, with 94 percent already digitized. GOA’s Erich Pratt told senators the system is “not a registry in name only” but “a confiscation list waiting to be used.”
ATF’s defense has been just as familiar: the records supposedly cannot be searched by purchaser name. That was never good enough. Now, in an AI world, it borders on absurd.
Congress banned federal gun registration in the Firearm Owners’ Protection Act of 1986. The law, codified at 18 U.S.C. § 926(a), prohibits “any system of registration of firearms, firearms owners, or firearms transactions.”
Schlangen’s paper focuses on “any system” because the Bureau’s argument has always leaned on technical hair-splitting. Former ATF Director Steven Dettelbach said ATF pays to remove search functionality from Adobe files to comply with Congress’s ban. Schlangen points out what that really means: ATF has the underlying data. Names, addresses, dates of birth, firearm descriptions, and serial numbers are visually present in the files. The claimed safeguard is a disabled software feature.
That is not a constitutional firewall. It is a software toggle.
The paper says ATF’s Out-of-Business Records Imaging System, or OBRIS, holds about 921 million digitized transaction records from dealers who closed or surrendered their licenses. These are images of Form 4473s, the forms Americans fill out when buying guns from licensed dealers. They contain the exact information gun owners have always feared the government would centralize: name, address, date of birth, firearm description, and serial number.
The old ATF talking point assumes that preventing text-based search prevents data extraction. Schlangen argues that modern AI destroys that assumption. Multimodal AI systems can process document images as visual objects. They do not need a normal PDF search bar. They can read, extract, structure, and connect data from images. A handwritten serial number on a 4473 is not invisible to AI just because Adobe search is disabled. That should end the “not searchable” excuse.
ATF does not need a neat alphabetical list to have a registry problem. If AI can extract names and serial numbers from scanned 4473s, connect them to other records, and produce person-to-firearm associations, then the government has created the functional equivalent of what Congress banned.
Schlangen calls this “registry-equivalent knowledge.”
The concept is simple. A traditional registry tells the government who owns what. An AI-inferred registry may do the same thing without being stored as a traditional registry. The paper identifies three dangerous capabilities: the ability to type in a person’s name and receive a likely firearms profile; the ability to generate lists of probable gun owners in a geographic area or population group; and the ability to connect a firearm, serial number, model, or ballistic clue to a likely owner outside the traditional trace process.
Any one of those should alarm every gun owner in America. All three together would be a shadow registry in everything but name.
It is a warning that the data, the technology, and federal AI policy are converging. Waiting until the switch is flipped would be a reckless way to defend the Second Amendment.
The danger also goes beyond OBRIS. ATF maintains multiple sales reports. It uses eTrace for firearm tracing. NIBIN contains millions of ballistic images. The NFA registry already tracks suppressors, machine guns, short-barreled rifles, and other restricted items. Each of those systems may be defended as limited, separate, or lawful on its own. But AI is built to connect dots.
A billion records, processed through AI, tied to trace data, ballistic data, dealer records, and other government inputs, can produce something far more dangerous than any single filing cabinet.
It can produce a gun-owner dossier.
This is where ATF’s long-running registry problem gets more serious. AmmoLand has already covered the Bureau’s push to digitize massive volumes of private firearm records and the concern that the agency is moving one step closer to a national gun registry. Prior coverage noted that Biden-era record-retention changes ended the old 20-year destruction limit and moved FFL records toward permanent retention.
AI makes that permanent stockpile more dangerous.
Schlangen also explains why the legal landscape is better for future challenges than it once was. The old NRA v. Reno case upheld temporary NICS record retention, but that involved a limited audit-retention system, not a permanent billion-record archive that could be processed with modern AI. More importantly, Reno was decided under Chevron deference, when courts often deferred to federal agencies. After Loper Bright, courts no longer have to accept ATF’s self-serving interpretation of what counts as “any system of registration.”
A post-Loper Bright court can read § 926(a) for itself. If Congress said “any system,” courts do not have to pretend the law only covers a database that looks like it came from 1986. A repeatable AI process that uses OBRIS images, eTrace data, multiple-sale reports, and other inputs to output firearm ownership associations is a system in the ordinary meaning of the word.
The Second Amendment concern is just as obvious. Schlangen points to First Amendment cases recognizing that government knowledge of constitutionally protected activity can chill the exercise of rights. The paper acknowledges that courts have not yet fully extended that chilling-effect doctrine to the Second Amendment, but the principle should not be hard to understand.
If Americans believe the federal government can quietly build firearm ownership profiles from dealer records, background-check residue, trace systems, and AI inference, some will hesitate before buying, selling, or keeping arms. That chill is not hypothetical. Registration has always been sold as paperwork. In practice, it tells the government who has what.
Once the government knows who has what, the next step is targeting for confiscation.
Gun owners do not oppose registries because they are paranoid. They oppose registries because history keeps proving them right. Registration is how governments move from regulating arms to tracking them. Tracking is how they move from tracking to confiscation, selective enforcement, or political intimidation.
The paper’s conclusion is blunt. ATF is a federal agency. Its firearm transaction records are government data. Federal AI policy is moving toward broad data ingestion. One of the publicly known barriers between ATF’s records and a searchable registry is disabled search functionality. In an age of OCR, entity extraction, record linkage, and AI inference, that is a fragile shield for a statutory command.
Congress needs to close the gap now.
The fix should be direct: amend § 926(a) so the registry ban applies not only to formal databases, but also to any AI system, machine-learning model, computational process, or inferential tool that allows the government to derive firearm ownership information from federal data. Congress or the Executive Branch should also wall off firearm transaction records from federal AI-ingestion and model-training programs. ATF should be forced to publish a public AI-governance policy and explain what it is doing with gun-owner data.
No registry means no registry.
Not a paper registry.
Not a searchable registry.
Not a billion-record “non-searchable” archive.
And not an AI-powered shadow registry built from 4473s, trace data, ballistic records, multiple-sale reports, or any other government stockpile of lawful gun-owner information.
Duncan Johnson is a lifelong firearms enthusiast and unwavering defender of the Second Amendment—where “shall not be infringed” means exactly what it says. A graduate of George Mason University, he enjoys competing in local USPSA and multi-gun competitions whenever he’s not covering the latest in gun rights and firearm policy. Duncan is a regular contributor to AmmoLand News and serves as part of the editorial team responsible for AmmoLand’s daily gun-rights reporting and industry coverage.
Patrick “Tate” Adamiak is serving 20 years in federal prison. Not for possessing functional weapons, but for possessing items that the government’s own witnesses said could not fire a projectile.
Cut-up parts that required welding to function. Grenade-launcher components stored separately with multiple lawful uses. Two tubes stamped “INERT” and “TRAINING AID DUMMY” with a hole drilled through them.
That is what the federal government turned into a National Firearms Act conviction.
The federal government did not just “stretch” the National Firearms Act in the Patrick “Tate” Adamiak case. According to a new Supreme Court amicus brief, federal prosecutors treated cut-up parts, separated components, and inert training tubes as if they were functioning NFA weapons, then used that theory to help send a decorated Navy veteran with no prior criminal history to federal prison for 20 years.
This is the administrative gun-control machine doing what it does best: taking vague or elastic federal definitions, pushing them beyond recognition, and punishing ordinary American citizens for exercising their rights.
The case is Patrick Tate Adamiak v. United States, No. 25-1190. The Supreme Court docket shows the petition was filed April 10, 2026, docketed April 16, and distributed for the Court’s May 14, 2026 conference. The United States waived its right to respond unless the Court asks for one.
The May 11 amicus brief filed by NAGR, Right to Bear, and PSA cuts straight to the point: the Fourth Circuit affirmed Adamiak’s conviction after disposing of his as-applied Second Amendment claim in a single sentence, calling it “squarely foreclosed” by circuit precedent. The amici argue the court did not examine the actual conduct, did not grapple with the actual items, and did not require the government to identify any historical tradition supporting this kind of prosecution.
That is exactly the kind of lower-court evasion Bruen was supposed to stop.
The Government Treated Inoperable Objects Like Working Weapons
The facts described by the amici should alarm every collector, parts-kit owner, surplus buyer, reenactor, museum, veteran, and gun owner who has ever relied on the difference between a working weapon and a nonfunctional object.
The brief says Adamiak was sentenced to 20 years for items the government’s own witnesses acknowledged could not fire a projectile. The PPSh-pattern remnants charged in Counts One and Two had been cut into pieces and required welding to function. The grenade-launcher components in Counts Three and Four were separated and stored apart, and the government allegedly conceded the receivers had been lawfully purchased through a federal firearms licensee and had multiple lawful uses. The two RPG-7-pattern launchers in Count Five were marked “INERT” and “TRAINING AID DUMMY,” lacked firing mechanisms, and had a hole drilled through the tube.
An inert, nonfiring RPG that was owned by Patrick “Tate” Adamiak. The ATF replaced dozens of internal parts in the nonfiring device in order to get it to fire one 7.62x39mm round. As a result, Adamiak was charged federally with owning real rocket-propelled grenade launchers. (Photo courtesy of Adamiak).Holes drilled into Adamiak’s inert RPGs are located where an operator’s face would be when firing. (Photo courtesy of Adamiak).
That is the government’s theory in plain English: cut-up remnants became machinegun evidence, separated components became launcher evidence, and inert tubes became destructive-device evidence.
The ATF and federal prosecutors did not merely push the outer edge of the NFA. As the amici frame it, the government treated nonfunctional items as if they satisfied the NFA’s definitions in the first place. That is a much bigger problem than “overregulation.” It is the government using its own interpretation of technical firearms definitions to manufacture criminal liability out of objects that could not fire in the condition possessed.
PSA made the same point in its public video on the filing. The company described Adamiak as a decorated Navy veteran who served overseas for more than a decade and now sits in federal prison “not for possessing functional weapons,” but for possessing items government witnesses said could not fire a projectile. PSA described the Fourth Circuit’s treatment of the case as “no examination of the actual items, no historical analysis, no demand that the government prove its case.”
The Fourth Circuit Gave The Government A Shortcut
The Supreme Court’s Second Amendment cases are not complicated on this point. Heller recognized the individual right to keep and bear arms. McDonald applied that right against the states. Bruen told lower courts how to analyze modern gun restrictions: if the Second Amendment’s plain text covers the conduct, the government bears the burden of proving the restriction is consistent with the nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.
The Fourth Circuit, according to the amici, skipped that work.
It relied on Bianchi v. Brown, a so-called “assault weapon” case, and United States v. Hunt, a felon-in-possession case, to reject Adamiak’s as-applied claim. But those cases did not involve cut-up PPSh parts, separated launcher components, inert RPG-style training tubes, or nonfunctional military relics.
If a court can ignore the actual object and simply say “foreclosed,” then Bruen becomes optional. The Second Amendment becomes a right that exists in Supreme Court opinions but disappears when ATF classifications and federal prosecutors enter the room.
No other constitutional right gets treated this way. A First Amendment case requires courts to examine the actual speech. A Fourth Amendment case requires courts to examine the actual search. A Second Amendment case should require courts to examine the actual arms, parts, or objects at issue, especially when the government is seeking decades in federal prison for possesion of those arms.
The Fourth Circuit did not do that.
“Dangerous And Unusual” Does Not Cover Inert Training Aids
The amici also confront one of the government’s favorite escape hatches: Heller’s reference to “dangerous and unusual” weapons.
The brief argues that the test is conjunctive. The government must show both. Not dangerous or unusual. Dangerous and unusual.
Under the facts described by the amici, the items Adamiak was charged for possessing were neither.
An item that cannot fire a projectile is not “dangerous” in the relevant constitutional sense. An item openly sold to collectors, museums, veterans, reenactors, historical societies, and ordinary Americans is not “unusual.” The amici argue that these prosecuted items cannot satisfy either prong, much less both.
PSA’s video put it more directly: items that cannot fire a projectile are not dangerous, and items sold openly to collectors and museums are not unusual.
That is the point federal gun regulators want to blur. They want the emotional reaction to the object – “RPG,” “launcher,” “machinegun” – to replace the legal question. But the legal question is not whether an inert tube looks scary in a photo. The question is whether the object actually meets the statutory definition and whether the government’s prosecution survives the Second Amendment test required by Bruen.
If the government can call a correctly marked inert training tube a destructive device, then the limiting principle is gone.
American History Is On The Side Of Collectors, Not The ATF
The historical section of the amicus brief is especially damaging to the government’s position. NAGR, Right to Bear, and PSA argue that America does not have a historical tradition of criminalizing civilian possession of military-pattern relics, surplus arms, demilled items, or inert training devices. The historical record points the other direction.
The brief traces civilian possession of military-pattern arms from the Founding generation’s private cannon and privateers, through the post-Civil War surplus market, through the federal Civilian Marksmanship Program, and into federal statutes that recognize surplus, antiques, curios, relics, and items not designed or redesigned as weapons.
The Civilian Marksmanship Program is especially important. The brief notes that for more than 120 years, the federal government has treated civilian possession of former military arms not merely as lawful, but as a positive object of national policy. The same section points to the NFA’s own destructive-device definition, which excludes devices “neither designed nor redesigned for use as a weapon” and includes a surplus-ordnance carve-out.
That undercuts the government’s position at its foundation. If functional former military arms have long been lawfully transferred to civilians through federal policy, then inert and demilled versions are on even stronger ground. The brief argues there is no historical regulation “in any era of American law” that criminalized possession of an inert relic merely because it bore the outward form of a once-functional military weapon.
That is the history Bruen requires courts to examine. The Fourth Circuit did not require the government to confront it.
This case is about more than Patrick Tate Adamiak.
It is about whether the ATF can misread the NFA’s own definitions until cut-up remnants become “machineguns,” inert tubes become “destructive devices,” and a nonfunctional object becomes the basis for a 20-year federal sentence.
It is about whether federal prosecutors can lean on technical firearms classifications, blur the line between parts and weapons, and then tell the courts the Second Amendment has nothing to say about it.
It is about whether collectors and gun owners can rely on the law as written, or whether they must live under a system where ATF interpretation, prosecutorial discretion, and judicial rubber-stamping decide their fate after the fact.
That is not the rule of law. That is the ATF’s NFA registration racket in action and a Biden-era enforcement machine taking definitions that were already constitutionally suspect, twisting them beyond recognition, and using that interpretation to obtain a 20-year conviction over objects the government’s own witnesses said could not fire a projectile.
This is what happens when an agency shaped by anti-gun politics is allowed to decide, after the fact, that parts are weapons, inert tubes are destructive devices, and a collector is a criminal. The Second Amendment cannot survive if federal prosecutors can win convictions by relabeling nonfunctional objects and then hiding behind judicial shortcuts.
The anti-gun bureaucracy has always depended on complexity. Make the statutes dense. Make the definitions technical. Make compliance expensive. Leave grey areas intentionally to allow for politically-motivated “interpretations” to lead to life-altering convictions.
The Second Amendment is not a second-class right, and inert relics are not working weapons because the ATF wants a conviction.
Duncan Johnson is a lifelong firearms enthusiast and unwavering defender of the Second Amendment—where “shall not be infringed” means exactly what it says. A graduate of George Mason University, he enjoys competing in local USPSA and multi-gun competitions whenever he’s not covering the latest in gun rights and firearm policy. Duncan is a regular contributor to AmmoLand News and serves as part of the editorial team responsible for AmmoLand’s daily gun-rights reporting and industry coverage.
