Three fronts are moving at once on gun rights right now: Congress and the courts handing down real wins, states passing new restrictions that immediately land in litigation, and a quieter fight over financial plumbing that never mentions the word "gun." Here's where each one actually stands, sourced to the primary documents.

Start with Congress. The Constitutional Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act (H.R. 38), sponsored by Rep. Richard Hudson (R-NC), would let anyone with a valid carry permit — or anyone from a constitutional-carry state — carry concealed across state lines under the visited state's rules. It cleared the House Judiciary Committee 18-9 in March 2025 (Congress.gov). Alongside it, Rep. Tom Emmer's Firearm Due Process Protection Act (H.R. 2184) gives people wrongly denied a gun purchase by a background-check error an actual legal path to fix it, and moved out of committee by voice vote (NSSF).

The courts have moved further and faster. In Wolford v. Lopez (June 25, 2026), the Supreme Court struck down Hawaii's default rule that private property open to the public was off-limits to armed carry unless the owner explicitly said otherwise — a 6-3 ruling that flips the default to "carry allowed unless posted" (SCOTUSblog). In United States v. Hemani (June 18, 2026), the Court ruled 9-0 to limit federal prosecutions of gun owners under the law barring drug users from possessing firearms, finding the government had overreached the Second Amendment in some applications (CNBC). And on June 30, 2026, the Court agreed to hear Viramontes v. Cook County (Seventh Circuit, out of Illinois) and Grant v. Higgins (Second Circuit, out of Connecticut), consolidated to decide whether AR-15-platform rifles — the most common rifle type in the country — are protected "arms in common use." Briefing is now underway for the Court's October 2026 term — petitioners filed their merits brief and joint appendix on schedule August 28, 2026, with amicus briefs following August 31 from groups including the National Sheriffs' Association — respondents' brief is due October 21, 2026, and on September 4, 2026 the Court set the case for argument on Wednesday, December 2, 2026, with a decision expected by June 2027 (SCOTUSblog). The Court is also holding three related magazine-cap petitions (Duncan v. Bonta, Gator's Custom Guns v. Washington, and NAGR v. Lamont) pending this case, meaning a single ruling here could resolve the rifle-ban and magazine-cap questions together.

On the regulatory side, the DOJ dismissed its own appeal in Mock v. Bondi on July 17, 2025, formally killing the 2023 ATF pistol brace rule nationwide — a rule that had effectively turned brace-equipped pistols into unregistered short-barreled rifles overnight for millions of owners (The Reload). Forced reset triggers, banned under the same enforcement posture, are now federally legal following a 2025 DOJ settlement, though several states still restrict them separately. The National Firearms Act took its own hit this summer. After the 2025 tax law zeroed out the $200 transfer and making taxes on suppressors, short-barreled rifles, and short-barreled shotguns, a federal judge in the Northern District of Texas ruled on August 5, 2026 that the underlying NFA registration regime for those items — with the tax gone — exceeds Congress's enumerated powers. The injunction took effect August 13, 2026 for the plaintiffs (Texas State Rifle Association, Gun Owners of America, Silencer Shop Foundation, 15 states, and named manufacturers and individual owners), and DOJ chose not to appeal (NRA-ILA). It's not a nationwide ruling, but for the plaintiffs covered it's the broadest NFA rollback in the law's 92-year history. ATF's "ghost gun" rule took another hit too. On remand from the Supreme Court's Bondi v. VanDerStok decision, a federal judge in the Northern District of Texas ruled on August 19, 2026 for Defense Distributed and the Second Amendment Foundation, invalidating ATF's frame-or-receiver rule as applied to specific Defense Distributed products (Defense Distributed v. Blanche). It's a narrower, as-applied win rather than a nationwide strike-down, but it's another regulatory retreat in the same direction as the pistol brace and forced-reset-trigger rollbacks.

And starting in May 2026, the DOJ went on offense: it sued Colorado over its statewide ban on magazines over 15 rounds, then in July 2026 sued Virginia over its new assault-firearms and magazine law and California over its "Glock ban" and Handgun Roster rules — three separate suits, all built on the same Bruen "common use" argument (DOJ, CBS News). Colorado's underlying law (SB25-003) took effect on schedule August 1, 2026 anyway — DOJ's suit remains pending and hasn't produced an injunction, so the ban is controlling in practice while the federal challenge plays out (Colorado General Assembly). In September 2026 DOJ widened the campaign, suing San Jose on September 16 over its nearly $1,600 carry-permit fee (DOJ) and Minnesota, Minneapolis, and St. Paul on September 24 over waiting periods of nearly 60 days (DOJ). The federal government is now actively litigating against state and local gun laws in four states, not just declining to defend one.

The state picture is a different story, and it's moving fast in the other direction in several statehouses. Rhode Island's Assault Weapons Ban Act of 2025 took effect July 1, 2026, with no legal challenge filed yet. Virginia's new ban on assault firearms and large-capacity magazines never actually took effect — a Washington County Circuit Court judge enjoined it statewide days before its July 1 start date, and a federal court has since paused the DOJ's own suit against the law, ruling it raises "nearly identical" questions to the Viramontes/Grant cases now before the Supreme Court. The last of four separate state-court challenges to the law, Crump v. Katz, was itself stayed on August 24, 2026, so every Virginia track — state and federal — is now paused on the same footing, with the statewide injunction blocking enforcement remaining in effect throughout (NRA-ILA). The ban stays blocked until the Court rules, likely not before mid-2027. Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey signed H.4885, expanding the state's "assault-style" weapon definition and restricting large-capacity feeding devices — voters get the final word too: a certified veto referendum, Question 9, asks Massachusetts residents to keep or repeal the law on the November 3, 2026 ballot (Ballotpedia). New York's turn came in August: the state's new ban on "convertible pistols" — Glock-style handguns modified or capable of accepting a switch to fire automatically — drew an immediate federal lawsuit from the NRA, Second Amendment Foundation, and Firearms Policy Coalition, filed August 13-14, 2026 in the Western District of New York. No injunction has been issued yet, so the ban remains in effect while the case proceeds — the same pattern already playing out in Virginia and Colorado. California, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Maryland, New Jersey, and D.C. — along with New York itself — already had comprehensive bans on the books (summary via USCCA).

The good news, if you're on the receiving end of these laws, is that courts keep striking pieces of them down. The D.C. Court of Appeals panel ruled in Benson v. United States (March 5, 2026) that D.C.'s 10-round magazine cap violates the Second Amendment outright — but that win didn't last. The full court granted en banc rehearing on April 22, 2026, which automatically vacated the panel's decision; no argument date has been set yet, and D.C.'s magazine cap remains in effect while the case is reheard (Reason/Volokh, Ammoland). The Third Circuit struck down New Jersey's ban on both certain semiautomatic rifles and large-capacity magazines in a case brought by the Association of New Jersey Rifle and Pistol Clubs (Cheeseman v. Davenport) — though New Jersey was granted a stay on August 4, 2026 and has a cert petition due October 15, 2026, so the ban remains enforceable for now while the state seeks Supreme Court review. Waiting periods are similarly split: New Mexico's seven-day waiting period — held likely unconstitutional by the Tenth Circuit in 2025 — received final summary judgment against the state on August 28, 2026 in Ortega v. Grisham (New Mexico is expected to appeal to the same Tenth Circuit panel that already ruled against it), while the First Circuit let Maine's 72-hour waiting period stand pending trial (Bloomberg Law). Not every circuit agrees — the Seventh Circuit went the other way in July 2026, upholding Illinois's ban on AR-15-style rifles and 30-round magazines 2-1 in Barnett v. Raoul, reversing a lower court that had blocked it.

Translation: there is no settled national answer right now. The law you live under depends entirely on which circuit you're standing in, and the Supreme Court's Viramontes/Grant argument on December 2 is very likely the case that finally forces a single national rule on rifle bans specifically.

This is the part that doesn't show up in a floor vote. When new gun laws stall or lose in court, the fight has increasingly moved to financial infrastructure — a lever no legislature has to approve.

The mechanism: in 2022, the International Organization for Standardization approved MCC 5723, a new merchant category code that flags a business specifically as a firearms retailer to every card network and bank that processes its transactions. California, New York, and Colorado now require its use; New York's comptroller and city pension trustees have publicly pushed for full implementation as a way to let banks flag "suspicious" purchase patterns at gun stores specifically (NYC Comptroller). At least seven Republican-led states have banned the code outright, and Congress passed its own answer: the Protecting Privacy in Purchases Act (H.R. 1181), which bars card networks from requiring the firearms-specific code at all and would preempt the state laws requiring it. The House passed it July 14, 2026, with the White House Office of Management and Budget issuing a same-day Statement of Administration Policy strongly endorsing the bill; it's now stalled in the Senate (Congress.gov, OMB).

Parallel to that: gun retailers have been quietly losing access to basic banking and payment processing. A Maryland gun shop, United Gun Shop, sued Capital One and Melio Payments in 2026 after its payment processing was abruptly shut off in March 2026 with Capital One citing "restricted industry" status — the shop says it cost roughly $75,000 in damages (Bearing Arms). The administration's response came a year earlier: an August 7, 2025 executive order, "Guaranteeing Fair Banking for All Americans," directly cites the Obama-era Operation Choke Point as precedent and orders federal banking regulators to strip "reputational risk" language from their exam guidance — language regulators had used to pressure banks into dropping "high-risk" but entirely legal customers, including firearms dealers (The White House, Federal Register).

On the advocacy side, Everytown Law and Giffords Law Center have taken the litigation-first approach explicitly public, launching a joint tracker of gun-industry lawsuits and currently serving as counsel in active suits against Glock, Smith & Wesson, Sturm Ruger, and Daniel Defense — not over any specific law broken, but under product-liability and public-nuisance theories aimed at the manufacturers directly (Everytown Law). It's a strategy that doesn't require winning a single vote in a single legislature — just enough lawsuits, in enough courts, to make the underlying business unworkable.

Put all three pieces together and the shape is clear: the legislative and judicial fights over the Second Amendment are close to even right now, genuinely contested in Congress and split badly across the circuits. The financial and litigation pressure campaign is a separate track altogether, aimed at the industry's plumbing rather than the law itself — and it's the one track where a single MCC code or a single dropped bank account can do what several failed statehouse votes couldn't.