The Trump administration hasn't been perfect on Second Amendment issues, but I think it's fair to say that there's a night-and-day difference between it and the Biden administration when it comes to firearms, gun owners, and "gun violence."
Under Donald Trump, the DOJ is going after cities and states infringing on our right to keep and bear arms, while the ATF is focused on disrupting gun trafficking networks and pursuing violent offenders instead of adopting rules and policies that are aimed at firearm manufacturers and lawful gun owners.
While those of us who care about our constitutional rights see this as a good thing, for the anti-gunners at the New York Times it's cause for alarm.
The administration’s approach to gun violence also reflects President Trump’s long political alliance with gun rights groups and his determination to undo the policies of his predecessor, former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. Soon after taking office, Mr. Trump shuttered Mr. Biden’s White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention, ordered a review of Mr. Biden’s firearms policies and issued an executive order titled, “Protecting Second Amendment Rights.”
Joe Biden declared the firearms industry "the enemy" during his presidential campaign, and created the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention to serve as an in-house gun control group for the administration to wage a whole-of-government attack on the industry, gun owners, and the right to keep and bear arms.
Of course the New York Times didn't have a problem with that, any more than the paper's editorial writers and reporters took issue with Biden originally tapping gun control activist David Chipman as head of the ATF; an appointment that failed to launch when several of Biden's fellow Democrats refused to support his nomination.
The Justice Department’s civil rights division also took the highly unusual step last week of suing Virginia and California to overturn those states’ restrictions on gun ownership. The suit was the division’s “first ever affirmative litigation in favor of expanding gun rights,” said Joseph Blocher, an expert on Second Amendment law at Duke University.
I disagree with Blocher. The DOJ isn't trying to "expand" gun rights. It's trying to strike down laws and end practices that infringe on our pre-existing right to keep and bear arms. But even under Blocher's view, the DOJ's lawsuit challenging Denver's "assault weapons" ban predates both the Virginia and California litigation. The DOJ Civil Rights Division's lawsuit against the US Virgin Island's gun licensing and gun storage laws was also filed months before the agency sued Virginia and California, so those suits are hardly the "first ever" affirmative litigation in support of our Second Amendment rights brought by the DOJ.
The Times also takes issue with the Trump administration slashing hundreds of millions of dollars in grants to "gun violence" prevention groups, while brushing aside the fact that those cuts don't seem to have had any kind of negative impact on violent crime. Last year's homicide rate was the lowest since the FBI started keeping track in 1960, and according to the Crime Index, homicides have declined another 18% from January to April this year.
That crime decline isn't uniform, and some cities are doing better than others. Chicago, for instance, has seen a 9% increase in homicides this year, while cities like Memphis and Houston have seen homicides continue to drop by more than 10%.
When it comes to crime, what goes down must come up at some point, and I have no doubt that the national homicide rate will climb again at some point. The trend since the early 1990s, however, has been a historic decrease in violence. We saw a short-term spike during the pandemic and the "defund the police" movement in 2020, but by 2022 the crime rates had plateaued and began to drop once again soon after.
The New York Times isn't really interested in telling that story, though. The paper just seems to be looking for things to complain about.
After The New York Times inquired about Mr. Trump’s policies, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives issued a news release saying its “shift in priorities” has resulted in nearly 50,000 firearms “seized from criminals” since January 2025.
But a majority of gun-related deaths in the United States, roughly 60 percent, are suicides, and experts say beefing up policing may not prevent them. Roughly 44,000 Americans, an average of 120 a day, died from gun-related injuries, including accidents and suicides, each day in 2024, the most recent year for which figures are available.
As homicides have fallen, suicides have increased; a fact that is true under both the Biden and Trump administrations. It's also true that "beefing up policing" isn't the best strategy for addressing suicide, but I'm not aware of anyone in the Trump administration who's actually making that argument.
Virtually every state in the country has a shortage of mental health workers, and the vast majority of states are also suffering from a shortage of inpatient beds for those in an acute crisis. This problem isn't new to the Trump administration, though. It's been a growing concern for decades.
I don't expect the progressives at the New York Times to cheer on the DOJ as it fights to ensure that Americans can exercise their Second Amendment rights, but the bias in the paper's report is truly breathtaking. The piece concludes with several complaints about the Trump administration taking down a report issued during the Biden administration aimed at providing instructions to states on how to enforce their "red flag" laws, with one critic claiming that "removing these reports from public view is the purest form of political control over public health and scientific integrity.”
Where were those critics when the Centers for Disease Control removed data about defensive gun uses from its website during the Biden administration? If it's bad now, then it was bad in 2022, but the handwringing and pearl-clutching only started after Trump was sworn in for his second term.
The New York Times report is red meat for its readers, but those of us who've been following both sides of the gun control debate can easily spot the gaping holes in its narrative... and the anti-2A bias that's present in almost every paragraph.
Editor's Note: The mainstream media continues to deflect, gaslight, spin, and lie about President Trump, his administration, and gun owners.
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