Despite being removed about three weeks ago amid a murky legal situation, the popular rifles are back on sale after gun-rights activists secured a statewide injunction against the state's "assault firearms" ban. So, we have one of those activists on the show this week to update us on the legal situation. That is Virginia Citizens Defense League (VCDL) president Philip Van Cleave.

Van Cleave said VCDL, the other gun-rights groups, and the gun industry's trade group all agree that AR-15 sales are now legal. He said VCDL believes that an injunction would be pointless if people weren't allowed to carry out the activities that are impacted. He said he's heard from many stores and individuals that they are indeed back to buying and selling ARs.

However, Van Cleave noted that not everyone has been willing to restart sales. He said there are some lingering concerns about what could happen if the injunction is overturned down the line and the law goes back into effect. Still, he argued there's little reason to think anyone would pursue people for buying or selling ARs while the law is enjoined.

He went on to argue the new AR-15 ban case at the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) means Virginia's law is doomed one way or the other. He believes SCOTUS will strike down the bans, but he said that could take another year. So, VCDL is pushing forward with the state-level cases against the law, and Van Cleave said he's hoping to get a final ruling there before SCOTUS acts.

Van Cleave agreed that the Virginia Supreme Court is harder to read. But he said he's confident in VCDL's case, and noted Attorney General Jay Jones (D.) has already failed on several fronts in defending the law.

Special Guest: Philip Van Cleave.

Stories:
-https://thereload.com/first-circuit-upholds-massachusetts-assault-weapons-ban/
-https://thereload.com/ar-15s-return-to-virginia-shelves-as-injunction-takes-effect/
-https://thereload.com/maine-democrat-set-to-replace-platner-moves-party-left-on-guns-in-key-senate-race/
-https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/22/style/gun-club-los-angeles.html

To explain the consensus that's developed across the appellate courts and provide a different perspective, we have Georgia State University Law Professor Andrew Willinger on the show. Willinger is the former executive director of the Duke University Firearms Law Center, and he teaches a class on the Second Amendment. He's also been critical of the Court's Second Amendment standard and its application at times.

He noted that every appellate court to decide an "assault weapons" or "high-capacity" magazine case has upheld restrictions on the devices. He said they've largely coalesced around similar reasoning. While the Supreme Court has gone out of its way to emphasize that step one of the Bruen test is meant to be a pretty simple filter, Willinger said most lower courts have actually upheld AR bans at step two.

Willinger said they've identified things like 19th-century Bowie knife bans as the core historical analogue for modern AR bans. He said courts have padded those laws with much earlier and much later weapons restrictions, such as the National Firearms Act of the 1930s. He noted some courts have also used the similarity between AR-15s and military weapons, like the M-16, to uphold the modern bans.

He rejected the idea that the consensus surrounding assault weapons bans in the lower courts is primarily a product of geography. Gun-rights activists have long claimed the fact that only a handful of deep blue states have these sorts of bans means only left-leaning circuits have the opportunity to review them. But Willinger argued that the judges involved in the decisions come from a fairly diverse background, with a number of them being Republican appointees.

Still, Willinger said he doubts the Supreme Court will find the same way the lower courts have. He argued we already know that four of the Republican appointees would strike down the law based on their public statements. He said Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Amy Coney Barrett are the only Republican appointees who haven't directly opined on the laws, but he also said he doesn't think they'll both split from the other conservatives.

Special Guest: Andrew Willinger.

To discuss it, we have someone who has been around for that entire history and played a major role in shaping the Court's Second Amendment jurisprudence. Lawyer Stephen Halbrook joins the show to explain that history and provide insight into how it will likely rule in the AR case.

Halbrook said the legal landscape was very different when he first started studying the issue. At that time, the idea that the Second Amendment protects much of anything was out of favor with the lower courts. Instead, he said, the collective-right formulation was the most widely accepted.

He noted it was a fairly small cohort of lawyers and academics that changed the legal landscape on the Second Amendment. He said the individual-rights formulation caught on quickly and culminated in the 2008 DC v. Heller decision. From there, the Court incorporated the Second Amendment right to own guns to the states in McDonald v. Chicago and then recognized the right to carry outside the home in New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen.

Halbrook said the Court added to its pro-gun precedents in the two cases it decided this year, and he expects it'll do the same again when it decides the AR-15 ban. He also provided some specific insight into why he believes the Court will go that direction and which justices are the ones to watch.

Special Guest: Stephen Halbrook.

On the one hand, the DOJ filed a first-of-its-kind lawsuit challenging Washington, DC's "assault weapons" ban. On the other, it defended the federal switchblade carry ban. To make sense of the two moves, we have Bearing Arms' Cam Edwards back on the show.

Cam said he is impressed by the DC suit. He argued that the DOJ might have a better chance of getting the law struck down than previous challenges did. He also said it could even be a candidate for Supreme Court review, though he noted there are several other cases that are much further along in the process.

However, Cam said he's disappointed by DOJ's defense of the federal switchblade restrictions. He argued the Trump Administration has been inconsistent on Second Amendment questions, and the latest moves show a continued dichotomy between how it treats state and federal laws. He said he'd like to see all approval on gun-related legal questions run through the DOJ's Civil Rights Division's Second Amendment Section.

We also discussed the reason Cam agreed to be a last-minute guest this week: Grabagun cancelled their CEO's planned appearance on the show. The company attempted to restrict talk about their involvement with Donald Trump Jr. before ultimately deciding not to do the interview.

Special Guest: Cam Edwards.

There has been a rash of bankruptcies and acquisitions among AR-15 makers in the past year. Some of the largest producers, like Anderson Manufacturing, have shut down their operations. To explain what's going on, we have KE Arms director Russell Phagan on the show.

Phagan has been selling AR-15s and parts for over 20 years. He said the market has shifted significantly since the guns were first put on the market over 65 years ago. He said the gun's popularity was built on the back of bans, military adoption, and even pop culture prominence.

However, he argued the market dynamics have shifted the past two decades. They've become more dependent on the threat of new bans in a feast-famine cycle. And the 2020 surge was so large that Phagan argued it nearly saturated the market. Combine that with a handful of other demand-depressing factors, and things are looking grim for those specializing in ARs today.