A lot of people are displeased with the Department of Justice. They see mixed signals from an administration that vowed to be strong on gun rights. They see them because they're present. The DOJ will defend gun rights one day, and oppose them the next. It's kind of causing a certain degree of whiplash.
But as I noted on Tuesday at the above link, purity was probably never going to happen.
For what it's worth, though, Larry Keane of the NSSF is pretty happy with what's happening overall.
President Donald Trump signed his Presidential Executive Order Protecting Second Amendment Rights back on February 7, 2025, instructing U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi to review all presidential and agency actions taken between January 2021 and January 2025 that “purport to promote safety” but infringed on the rights of law-abiding citizens. That includes rules issued by the DOJ and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), classifications of firearms and ammunition, regulatory enforcement policies and even reports issued by the former taxpayer-funded White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention that just pushed gun control.
In other words, for the first time, the Civil Rights Division is directed to treat the Second Amendment as what it is: a civil right deserving active protection, not a second-class right that must constantly give way to regulatory experimentation.
Sharp Right Turn
The contrast with former President Joe Biden’s White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention is remarkable. Created in September 2023 and overseen by Vice President Kamala Harris, that office was explicitly designed to coordinate “gun violence prevention” across the federal government, drive new executive actions on gun policy and implement a whole-of-government attack on the lawful and highly regulated firearm industry. It pushed measures like expanded use of so-called “red flag” laws that deny Due Process rights, pressured states to create their own “gun violence offices” and reinterpreted who counts as being “engaged in the business” of selling firearms.
Staffed by a former lobbyist for Everytown for Gun Safety and operated as a taxpayer-funded gun control shop inside the White House, the office never addressed criminal misuse of firearms. Instead, it left fingerprints on efforts to cut funding for school hunter-education programs and on controversial attempts to pressure manufacturers through coordinated litigation strategies — treating the Second Amendment as a problem to be managed.
Conversely, the DOJ’s new Second Amendment Rights Section starts from the premise that the right to keep and bear arms is a freedom to be protected. It has been tasked with enforcing constitutional guarantees when state and local officials slow-walk concealed carry permits, weaponize licensing schemes and otherwise treat law-abiding gun owners and federally licensed retailers as adversaries rather than citizens or engage in lawfare against lawful firearms businesses through unconstitutional gun control-backed laws that try to circumvent the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA).
He wrote a whole lot more, which I won't quote in entirety because that would be scummy and disgusting, (looking at you, websites who steal Bearing Arms content wholesale) but overall, he's happy about the change compared to the Biden years, and why wouldn't he?
At worst, the current DOJ is maintaining the status quo on a few particular measures. I don't agree with them on any of them, but none of these are going to take away rights we currently enjoy. Even if they win every case, most of us will remain untouched. I hope they lose them, mind you. I'm just saying we're not really giving up anything we currently have if they don't.
Meanwhile, the DOJ has gone after the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department over their dragging their butts in issuing concealed carry permits, and that was just to kick things off. Should that continue, we still will gain more overall from this DOJ than we reasonably ever thought we would. I'd have been happy with a DOJ that didn't constantly try to take away what we currently have, and we're getting better than that.
Is it perfect? Hell no. I really wish we had a different approach from them on a lot of cases working through the judicial system right now. Those cases have the added benefit of not being something the next administration can overturn on a whim, after all.
But it's better than we have ever gotten before.
Keane is right to be happy. I'm happy overall. We all should be.
Editor’s Note: President Trump and Republicans across the country are doing everything they can to protect our Second Amendment rights and right to self-defense.
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