The Justice Department announced Wednesday that it had filed lawsuits against two states for what the department alleged are “unconstitutional” restrictions on sales of certain types of guns.

In Virginia, the department is targeting a law that banned the sale of automatic weapons. In California, it is suing over a newly enacted law that restricts the sale of some firearms with a trigger that could be modified into a “machinegun-convertible pistol.” The California law went into effect on July 1.

In a statement, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said that “the Constitution is not a suggestion” and “the Second Amendment is a sacred right belonging to all Americans, even those in California.”

The DOJ said its Virginia suit, filed against both the state and the state police, alleges that the state’s law “unconstitutionally bans the purchase and sale of ordinary semi-automatic rifles owned by millions of Americans.”

“The Virginia law makes the commercial purchase of AR-15-style rifles a crime,” the Justice Department said in a news release. “The AR-15 rifle is the most popular rifle in America. Virginia’s enforcement of the new ban is a pattern or practice of conduct by the commonwealth’s law enforcement officers that deprives the citizens of Virginia of their constitutional right to buy and sell arms protected by the Second Amendment.”

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