Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon has most certainly been a bright spot in the Department of Justice that often doesn't seem to be able to make up its mind about gun control. Federal laws are defended vehemently by the DOJ, but Dhillon's Civil Rights Division goes after state and local regulations aggressively.
I don't know if she's in the room for the decisions on the federal challenges or not, but I suspect she's busy elsewhere.
Still, Dhillon recently sat down with Fox News and talked about the Trump administration's plan, and something she said really bothered me. I already knew it, and it's not about her or this administration at all, but it still bothered me.
"Since we started the Second Amendment section last year and even before that we filed over a dozen lawsuits challenging different restrictions in different jurisdictions," Dhillon said, pointing to challenges involving Denver's AR-15 ban, Colorado's large-capacity magazine restrictions, concealed carry permit delays in Los Angeles County, firearm regulations in the U.S. Virgin Islands and gun restrictions in the District of Columbia.
"This is a really historic amount of activity from the Department of Justice to protect the Second Amendment," Dhillon told Fox News Digital. "It's never been done before."
Previous administrations, including the Bush administration, defended individual gun rights through Supreme Court filings, such as District of Columbia v. Heller, but did not use the Civil Rights Division to file affirmative lawsuits challenging state or local gun laws on Second Amendment grounds. The department's current litigation strategy marks a departure from that approach.
Dhillon said the litigation is designed to produce lasting legal precedent rather than simply challenge every firearm restriction enacted by states.
"There are a lot of people out there in the Second Amendment community who would like us to challenge every restriction on guns," she said. "That's really not our approach. We have an approach that tries to make law for the land and that's got some appellate strategy in it."
I get that not everyone will like that concept, but let's understand that there are only so many resources to draw upon, and those need to go where they'll do the most good.
Now, what bothered me is simple. We've seen gun control really take hold over the last century or so. It was around before, but it was more low-key, in many ways. The 20th century brought numerous measures meant to restrict the right to keep and bear arms, building in momentum until it became a defining feature of American politics over the last quarter of the century or so.
And through it all, the DOJ sat silent. As noted above, they might file an amicus brief in a pro-gun case, but they never took the offensive to protect a basic civil liberty enshrined in the Bill of Rights' Second Amendment. They did nothing.
Our tax dollars went toward paying for a civil rights division that didn't give a damn about our civil rights.
Oh, some civil liberties were defended. Don't get me wrong, but not our gun rights. Not our right to keep and bear arms.
Dhillon's comment about how this has "never been done before" is something of a flex, but it's also an indictment. It's an indictment of every administration over the last 50 years or more, particularly of those who claimed to respect the Second Amendment.
What's happening now, with both the Civil Rights Division and the Second Amendment section, is a very good thing, and I welcome it. It's a nice change of pace, to say the least, and even if they're not taking on all the cases I want them to take on, they've already done more than any previous iteration of the Department of Justice ever has. I just wish it wasn't a surprise. I wish it weren't so novel.
Anti-gunners are losing their minds because the federal government is, for a change, backing people like us up over people like them. I guess when you're so used to using the taxpayers' money to fund your agenda, it's unsettling to see that change.
Let's hope they're forced to get used to it.
