Mother Jones and The Trace Are Very Upset That DOJ Is Defending All Civil Rights Now

People on the anti-gun side of things get very upset when you tell them that they treat the Second Amendment as a second-class right. How dare you say such a thing? Yes, they want tons and tons of regulations, including many that would never be tolerated if applied to other rights, but that’s totally different than seeing it as a second-class right.

We should take their word for that, too.

Yet in and amongst all of that, we have Mother Jones (in conjunction with The Trace), which is very upset that the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division is actually defending gun rights for a change. The nerve!

In September, the US Department of Justice sued the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, alleging that it had deprived “thousands of law-abiding” Californians of their fundamental rights. The lawsuit—spearheaded by the DOJ’s storied Civil Rights Division—was unusual. It didn’t take aim at the notorious “deputy gangs” that have operated inside the sheriff’s department for decades. Nor did it target the department’s former leadership for allegedly stonewalling outside investigations of deputies suspected of abusing detainees. Instead, the DOJ accused LA County’s top cop of slow-walking concealed carry permits in a “systematic obstruction” of Second Amendment rights.

The case—which the Trump administration touted as the DOJ’s first-ever “affirmative lawsuit in support of gun owners”—relies on a decades-old statute intended to help the feds crack down on local law enforcement agencies engaged in a “pattern or practice” of civil rights violations. It’s the latest sign that under President Donald Trump, the Civil Rights Division has made a hard break with its onetime commitment to protecting the politically disempowered and has morphed into a potent weapon in MAGA’s nonstop culture battles. 

“First-of-its-kind lawsuit dropped—the Second Amendment rights of Californians will NOT be trampled,” Harmeet Dhillon, a Republican activist and lawyer Trump picked to lead the Civil Rights Division, posted on X after filing the suit.

Now, let’s talk about the “deputy gangs” at the LA County Sheriff’s Department for a second. The linked report alleges that these have existed for around 50 years. That means numerous Democratic administrations had the chance to address them and didn’t, but it’s horrific that the DOJ is taking the LASD to task over something else rather than the thing Carter, Clinton, Obama, and Biden failed to address?

The “stonewalling” link heads toward a story from 2022, smack dab in the middle of Biden’s term.

In other words, Democrats ignored these issues, but Trump is at fault for not focusing there instead of somewhere else?

I find this troubling, mostly because Mother Jones/The Trace are upset that this is happening now when it’s never happened before, and that it’s happening now is the problem. Gun rights are civil rights. The DOJ should have been protecting those for decades and hasn’t, which has been a major failing on the part of numerous presidents.

Mother Jones and the Bloomberg-backed The Trace can lament this as an example of the Trump administration engaging in culture war battles, but the division is protecting civil liberties across the board. They’re not just focusing on guns. They’re going after religious discrimination, free speech, and a host of other issues that are typically what the division focuses on. They’ve just expanded their repertoire to include gun rights, which should have been there from the word “go.”

In truth, what these and other anti-gunners have an issue with is that the DOJ stopped treating gun rights as second-class rights. They started treating them as the civil liberties they are. Never let them try to convince you they don’t see them as second-class, either, because their actions speak far louder than any denial ever could.

Editor’s Note: The mainstream media continues to lie about gun owners and the Second Amendment. 

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