The Department of Justice is looking at gun rights as civil rights for a change. This is incredibly good news because, well, gun rights are civil rights. They’re part of the Bill of Rights for a reason, and the Founding Fathers put them in the second of the ten ratified amendments over things like protection against search and seizure, the right to not be forced to incriminate yourself in court, and others.
In other words, this should have been the norm since the moment the Department of Justice got into the civil rights defense game (especially given some of the infringements on our Second Amendment rights that took place in the 1960s when the Civil Rights Division was created).
But not everyone is thrilled with this latest development. Sure, the anti-gun groups are displeased, but there’s concern coming from a completely different corner.
Gun rights groups aren’t fully sold on the Trump Department of Justice’s (DOJ) decision to launch a new Second Amendment Rights division.
Advocates frustrated by the DOJ’s recent litigation positions are reserving judgement, hoping its creation is more than a public relations stunt.
“The Justice Department’s stance on the Second Amendment is not much better today than it was over the past four years,” Gun Owners of America (GOA) Senior Vice President Erich Pratt told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “This DOJ has met us with opposition in almost every legal battle we have had.”
The DOJ has filed briefs urging courts to shut down GOA cases challenging policies that have since been repealed and defending restrictions like a 1986 machine gun ban. One of GOA’s biggest concerns is the DOJ opposing their challenge to National Firearms Act of 1934 (NFA) registration requirements, which the group declared an “open attack on the Second Amendment.”
I’m not quite sure I can agree with Pratt here.
Yes, the DOJ has been far from ideal on gun issues, particularly the NFA issue, but we were never going to get Second Amendment purity from a Department of Justice headed up by Pam Bondi. That was never going to happen.
To say that it’s not much better than the Biden administration’s DOJ, though, means ignoring not just the work being done in going after the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, but also the fact that this same DOJ has stood with gun rights groups in several state-level challenges to bans on commonly-owned arms like the AR-15. That’s something that has never happened before.
I get the frustration, but I just don’t think it’s fair to say it’s not much better than it was in the Biden era.
In fact, I stand by my claim that this is the most pro-gun administration of my lifetime, if not in history. If people want to gripe about that, then why not gripe about the fact that the bar Trump and Bondi had to clear for that was so damn low they could moonwalk over it?
Personally, I think it’s a good thing, even if we don’t get 2A purity from the division. At least recognizing that gun rights are civil rights is a massive step in the right direction, and while it’s unlikely to stay that way indefinitely–the next Democrat in the Oval Office will probably scuttle the whole thing unless Congress mandates it–we can acknowledge that step while still lobbying for the DOJ to do even more.
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