For the most part, I think Republicans are pretty happy with what they've gotten from the Trump administration on most issues. They might want a renewed focus on some things, and more than a few aren't really thrilled about the whole Iran War thing, but all in all, he's doing what he said he'd do.
Yet one area where there are some discrepancies is in the administration's handling of Second Amendment issues. We've gotten a bunch of executive orders that were good, making him the most pro-gun president of my lifetime, at a minimum, but his Department of Justice has also continued to defend blatantly unconstitutional gun control laws.
And that means at least some of his high-profile supporters are having to oppose him on those issues.
A prime example is Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach.
But Kobach does not always take Trump's side. Speaking with The Capital-Journal, he pointed to two examples.
One is a Second Amendment case in federal court in Texas where Kobach, representing Kansas, is one of several Republican-led states and other plaintiffs.
There is also a parallel gun rights case in Missouri where his office drafted an amicus brief.
"Those are actually concerning the federal regulation of suppressors, which are the noise-reducing devices on firearms," Kobach said. "Congress in 2025 had a provision in the Big Beautiful Bill that remove the tax on those suppressors and thereby remove the constitutional basis for the regulation of them.
"The Trump ATF has failed to follow the Constitution. And so Kansas is leading a suit of other Republican states suing the Trump Department of Justice, because it's the Department of Justice that controls ATF and is not responding correctly to uphold the Constitution."
The Texas case has been awaiting a decision on a motions for summary judgment for several months.
The other issue was disagreeing with the Ticketmaster settlement, which isn't big and isn't germane to what we're talking about here. There, Kobach is mostly going to keep pursuing a case that the Trump administration is done with. On suppressors, though, that's him actively opposing the Trump administration.
And he's right to oppose it.
As noted above, the Big Beautiful Bill erased the tax stamp on suppressors, as well as short-barreled rifles and shotguns. However, we're still required to jump through all of the other NFA hoops before we can buy either of them. The problem is that the NFA was sold to the public and defended in the courts not as gun control, but as a tax. The records were required simply to make sure the tax had been paid. Nothing more, nothing less.
With the tax gone, the other paperwork requirements should be gone as well. The DOJ shouldn't be fighting this one. They should be standing in the courtroom and saying, "No, they're right, but we're required to keep doing it until you guys shut us down."
But they don't. They won't.
And, as a result, a lot of us who supported Trump are sitting here shaking our heads, because we expected better than this.
Granted, it's not like any of us feel we made a mistake. Things would be even worse if Kamala Harris won, but still, is it so wrong to get what we expected?
Editor’s Note: The radical Left will stop at nothing to enact their radical gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights.
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