Second Amendment Roundup: Civil Rights Division Sues Virgin Islands

The Virgin Islands government didn’t get the memo that Bruen was decided.

On December 16, Harmeet Dhillon's Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice filed the complaint in U.S. v. Government of Virgin Islands in the District Court of the Virgin Islands.  The lawsuit was filed "to restore the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens" under 34 U.S.C. § 12601, which authorizes the Attorney General to sue a governmental authority engaging in a pattern or practice that deprives persons of rights, privileges, or immunities secured or protected by the Constitution or laws of the United States.

Under Virgin Islands ("VI") law, possessing or carrying an unlicensed firearm is an offense subjecting an individual to a term of "imprisonment of not less than ten years," and/or a fine "not less than $10,000 nor more than $15,000."

But to obtain a license to possess and carry a firearm, a person must "establish[] to the satisfaction of the Commissioner [of the Police Department] that he has good reason to fear death or great injury to his person or property, or … any other proper reason for carrying a firearm, and the circumstances of the case, established by affidavit of the applicant and of at least two credible persons, demonstrate the need for such license."

There's no principled difference between that and the New York law that the Supreme Court in Bruen found to infringe on the Second Amendment: the applicant must prove "proper cause," meaning "a special need for self-protection distinguishable from that of the general community," i.e., evidence "of particular threats, attacks or other extraordinary danger to personal safety."

As the VI complaint further alleges, an applicant for a license must have "good moral character" without articulating any standard therefor, and a license may be denied to "any person who for justifiable reasons is deemed to be an improper person by the Commissioner" or if a "proper reason exists to deny such application," without specifying any standard.  A separate license must be obtained for each specific firearm, which must be inspected annually by the police.

By contrast, the shall-issue licensing regimes approved in footnote 9 of Bruen "appear to contain only 'narrow, objective, and definite standards' guiding licensing officials, … rather than requiring the 'appraisal of facts, the exercise of judgment, and the formation of an opinion,' … —features that typify proper-cause standards like New York's."

Without any legal authority, the VI Police Department requires the applicant to install a safe that is permanently bolted to the home's wall or floor where a licensed firearm is to be stored. Each applicant must have his or her own safe even if they share a home with another applicant (as in the case of married couples).  Before a license is issued, a home inspection is required, which takes several months to a year to schedule and complete.

Again, as Bruen's footnote 9 states: "because any permitting scheme can be put toward abusive ends, we do not rule out constitutional challenges to shall-issue regimes where, for example, lengthy wait times in processing license applications or exorbitant fees deny ordinary citizens their right to public carry."  And of course the Virgin Islands still has a may-issue regime, news of the Bruen decision having apparently been ship-wrecked on its journey there.

But the usual suspect nanny states on the mainland did get the Bruen decision and have taken every measure to obstruct it.  The recent article by Mark W. Smith, "Licenses Delayed, Rights Denied: How Contemporary Firearm Carry Licensing Regimes Continue to Violate the Second Amendment," Harvard JLPP (Fall 2025), summarizes the situation as follows:

jurisdictions hostile to gun rights have responded not with compliance, but with sophisticated resistance. In these states, the right recognized in Bruen exists on paper but remains largely inaccessible in practice. These states have transformed federalism's promise of experimentation into what can only be described as laboratories in denying constitutional rights. The tools are facially neutral—processing times, training requirements, documentation standards—but their cumulative effect is anything but.  When examined systematically, these measures reveal a deliberate strategy of administrative nullification that courts have been slow to recognize and even slower to remedy.

The Virgin Islands are hardly a tropical paradise where no one really needs a gun for self-defense.  Homicide, robbery, and drug trafficking are endemic.  Data from the Virgin Islands Police Department describe "violent crime statistics exceeding national averages and creating serious concerns for the territory's 87,146 residents. The homicide rate in the US Virgin Islands continued to surpass that of mainland United States and even major cities like Chicago, establishing the territory as one of the most dangerous areas under US jurisdiction."

The Virgin Islands is not the only jurisdiction being targeted by the Civil Rights Division.  In September, the Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division sued the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department "due to their pattern or practice of infringing the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens seeking concealed carry weapons (CCW) permits."

 

 

Comments

[Please, Daivd, Seek Help]

As I understand it, the majority of the constitution did not, in general, extend to residents of the USVI until statute (48 USC 1561) subsequently extended many of the provisions of the constitution to residents of the USVI (including 2A), per the text:

> The following provisions of and amendments to the Constitution of the United States are hereby extended to the Virgin Islands to the extent that they have not been previously extended to that territory and shall have the same force and effect there as in the United States or in any State of the United States: article I, section 9, clauses 2 and 3; article IV, section 1 and section 2, clause 1; article VI, clause 3; the first to ninth amendments inclusive; the thirteenth amendment; the second sentence of section 1 of the fourteenth amendment; and the fifteenth and nineteenth amendments ...

I understand that this creates a statutory right to bear arms in the USVI, but it is unclear to me if it creates that right in a way that supersedes other statutes of the USVI. In other words, do you read it as being the case that Congress can by statute extend or retract the constitution by saying so, and such a declaration itself has constitutional rather than statutory power?

The language in the statute does note that laws "which are inconsistent with the provisions of this subsection" are repealed, but the statute doesn't have subsections (drafting error! oops!), and the same section that extends the provisions of the constitution also has language that says, with the same operative power, "Nothing contained in this chapter shall be construed to limit the power of the legislature herein provided to enact laws for the protection of life, the public health, or the public safety." By ordinary principles of statutory interpretation, clauses that say they operate notwithstanding other clauses trump those other clauses.

I don't know anything about anything, and it may well be the case that the clause I quote above is understood as not only extending the constitutional rights with statutory force, but also understood as extending them with constitutional force, and the notwithstanding clause is thus intended to be entirely mooted. But that's really not obvious to me, and I am surprised that your post treats this as so cut and dry that it doesn't even mention the unusual status of the U.S. constitution in the insular territories. You're the constitutional scholar, not me......