The Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division has a long and storied history of standing up for, well, civil rights. They’ve taken on a ton of cases over the years, and they’ve got an impressive record in court cases. However, throughout all that storied history, there was always one civil right they ignored.
Before the Trump administration, they never took on a Second Amendment case.
It didn’t matter how egregious the infringement was, the executive branch turned a blind eye to unconstitutional gun laws throughout the country, essentially giving a rubber stamp to whatever the states wanted to do. The onus for protecting gun rights fell exclusively to privately funded gun rights organizations.
Now, The Trace and Mother Jones are very upset that the Civil Rights Division is actually protecting civil rights.
In the section’s first six months of operation, the Justice Department has brought cases against police departments in Los Angeles County and the Virgin Islands, the city of Denver, the state of Colorado, and the nation’s capital, Washington, DC. Virginia may be next: Minutes after Gov. Abigail Spanberger signed an assault weapon ban last month, Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon posted on X, “See you in court!”
The Civil Rights Division typically fights for the disempowered by enforcing federal anti-discrimination statutes. It was created in 1957 to ensure Black voting rights and school desegregation. Gun rights “have never been a focus,” said Megan Marks, a former attorney in the division who is now deputy director and managing editor of Red Line for Civil Rights, a nonprofit initiative that tracks the politicization of civil rights enforcement under President Donald Trump.
Not surprisingly, pro-gun organizations are thrilled with the Civil Rights Division’s new direction. “It’s great to have that giant 800-pound gorilla in the room with us,” said Kostas Moros, director of legal research and education for the Second Amendment Foundation, which has more than 50 active lawsuits seeking to void gun laws across the country. “Because courts, like it or not, do take the DOJ more seriously. And frankly it’s nice to have the DOJ at least seeing the Second Amendment as equal to all the other rights.”
The DOJ’s suits come at a time when the Trump administration has departed from more traditional civil rights issues—discrimination against marginalized groups based on race, sex, disability, and religion—by pursuing conservative policies, reshaping DEI initiatives, investigating “reverse discrimination,” and suing universities over affirmative action practices.
Of course, Marks is right. Gun rights have never been a focus of the Civil Rights Division. That doesn’t make it right, though. Especially when you remember that many gun control laws were created primarily to disarm the same black men and women the division was created to protect via desegregation and voting rights.
Yes, we’re thrilled that we’ve got the “800-pound gorilla,” as Moros framed it, because these are civil rights that have been largely ignored.
In fact, everything that Mother Jones is griping about is a case of where someone’s civil rights have been trampled on, but it was fine with them because it was the right people getting their rights stomped flat. What the hell happened to equal protection under the law in their world?
Look, I’m not saying that “discrimination against marginalized groups” is a good thing. I’m not saying it shouldn’t be investigated and handled. What I’m saying is that, for the first time ever, the federal government is standing with people’s actual rights, including our right to keep and bear arms, which that particular office actively ignored for decades.
You’ll excuse me if the groups that have been used to having this office and their beck and call, using our tax dollars to defend them while ignoring us entirely, have to wait a little bit, as rights that also pertain to them get pushed to the forefront. Gun rights are human rights, after all.
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