ATF Names Gun Rights Scholar to Chief Counsel Role

When Pam Bondi stepped into the role as Attorney General, one of her first actions relating to the Second Amendment was to fire Pamela Hicks, the general counsel for the ATF.

It was a nice sign of what we hoped were things to come, but that hasn’t really materialized as we hoped. In fact, if anything, we saw some backsliding, at least until Wednesday when Bondi made a pro-gun move.

Yet it wasn’t the only move that day. 

The ATF has named a new chief counsel, and it’s not one the anti-gunners are going to love.

Less than a month after the Trump administration fired the top lawyer at the ATF, a new face has appeared on the agency’s leadership page. 

In late February, Guns.com reported that Pamela Hicks, a Justice Department attorney who had been serving as the agency’s Chief Counsel since 2021, had been terminated. U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi at the time told the media, “These people were targeting gun owners– not going to happen under this administration. And we’re looking to hire really great people.”

This week, with Hicks’ photo long scrubbed from the ATF’s leadership page, a new face appeared, that of Robert Leider, listed as Assistant Director/Chief Counsel. 

Who is Leider, and why does he matter to gun owners? 

Self-described on his social media page as “Associate Professor, GMU, Antonin Scalia Law School. Interests include the right of self-defense, gun control, and the Second Amendment,” Leider has written extensively on the subject of Constitutional rights, and, in particular, gun rights. One of his recent scholarly works includes a 56-page paper on “The Individual Right To Bear Arms For Common Defense,” preceded by a 48-pager on “The General Right to Bear Arms,” and 23 pages on “Constitutional Liquidation, Surety Laws, and the Right to Bear Arms.”

In that 56-page paper, Leider argues that the two prevailing theories on the Second Amendment–the anti-gun one that says it’s a collective right and the one espoused in Heller saying that it’s an individual right to self-defense–are both basically wrong. Instead, it’s an individual right for the common defense.

In other words, defense against foreign invasion and tyranny.

That’s pretty much my take.

In a post on his blog, Leider has defended rifles as being protected by the Second Amendment, something important now as many try to restrict semi-auto rifles. That’s an important point.

Perhaps even more important, though, is something I covered here not that long ago: Leider making the case that dissolving the ATF wouldn’t solve all of the issues concerning gun rights. It’s not that he’s saying the ATF shouldn’t be abolished, only that it’s not enough in and of itself.

With Leider filling the role as chief counsel, it seems likely that he’ll be putting his stamp on anything to do with regulations. Since he doesn’t seem to be a fan of those in general, we can probably figure ourselves safe for the time being on that front.

The truth is that this is a big step forward. Leider is going to be the legal brain at the ATF, and he views the right to keep and bear arms the same way many of us do, which is something that has been lacking for decades.

The ATF is the only federal agency that exists, even in part, to explicitly regulate a constitutionally protected right. Having someone there who understands that it is, in fact, a right, means that we may finally see the ATF suck just a little bit less.