Does DOJ’s New Second Amendment Section Come With a Catch?

More than a week after news first broke about the Department of Justice creating a new section of the Civil Rights Division focusing on Second Amendment issues, Attorney General Pam Bondi has made it official. 

The section will be overseen by Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, who heads up the Civil Rights Division and has already taken an active role in challenging the lengthy wait times for concealed carry permits in Los Angeles as well as bans on “assault weapons” and large-capacity magazines in Illinois and New Jersey. 

In a video shared on X, Dhillon discussed the scope of the new section. As Fox News notes, it appears that the Second Amendment Section will focus exclusively on fighting state and municipal gun control laws. 

According to Dhillon, the department will fight a variety of state and local courts on gun issues, particularly difficulties around concealed carry permits.

“Some of the things we’re seeing, and that is going to be the focus of our work around the country, includes multi-thousand-dollar costs for citizens to apply for concealed carry permits,” she said.

“Other jurisdictions are having unreasonably long delays. Other jurisdictions are outlawing guns that should be protected by the Second Amendment under the recent Supreme Court precedent.”

She also emphasized that gun rights “equalizes the ability of those of us, women, people with disabilities, and others who might otherwise be more vulnerable to be able to protect ourselves.”

I’m glad to see that the sky-high cost to carry in places like Santa Clara County, California are on Dhillon’s radar, but if the new Second Amendment Section will take on only state and local gun laws while leaving federal gun controls unquestioned, it will be a lost opportunity to protect our civil right to keep and bear arms from federal intrusion.

Oliver Krawczyk, an attorney who specializes in Second Amendment litigation at Ambler Law, told Fox News Digital that the section creation is a “welcome change,” though the DOJ has had a flawed record on the issue.

“For years, individuals and grassroots organizations have had to fight unconstitutional firearm regulations alone, and so federal help will always be appreciated,” Krawczyk said. “However, this DOJ should not ignore its own complicity in violating the Second Amendment.”

“Rather than resisting ongoing legal challenges to 20th-century federal gun control laws, this DOJ should be working with pro-gun organizations to make the most of President Trump’s limited time in office,” he added. 

The DOJ’s unwillingness to challenge federal gun laws has been the major gripe of 2A organizations like Gun Owners of America and Firearms Policy Coalition, and rightfully so. In President Trump’s executive order on protecting the Second Amendment, the president directed Attorney General Pam Bondi to “examine all orders, regulations, guidance, plans, international agreements, and other actions of executive departments and agencies (agencies) to assess any ongoing infringements of the Second Amendment rights of our citizens, and present a proposed plan of action to the President, through the Domestic Policy Advisor, to protect the Second Amendment rights of all Americans.”

Bondi was also specifically directed to assess “the positions taken by the United States in any and all ongoing and potential litigation that affects or could affect the ability of Americans to exercise their Second Amendment rights.”

Since that directive was issued in February and Bondi had a 30-day deadline, she and her staff have presumably completed those tasks. And it’s true that the DOJ has reversed the position of the Biden administration in a few cases. The DOJ now acknowledges, for example, that suppressors are protected by the Second Amendment… but it’s still defending the tax and registration requirements for NFA items, as well as the National Firearms Act itself. 

The DOJ has also declined to appeal a lower court decision that held 18-to-20-year-olds should be able purchase handguns at retail, instead of waiting until 21 as federal law requires. Even so, Solicitor General D. John Sauer has urged the Supreme Court to hold on to several cases challenging the ban on handgun sales to under-21s until after the Court issues its opinions in Wolford v. Lopez and U.S. v. Hemani next year. 

If the justices follow his request and delay granting cert to the four cases addressing gun control laws aimed at adults under 21, they’ll most likely remand those cases back to the lower courts after granting cert and vacating the previous decisions, and it could be several more years before those challenges reach the Supreme Court once again.

There are enough state and local infringements on our Second Amendment rights to keep the DOJ’s new section busy for the rest of President Trump’s term, but that doesn’t mean that every federal gun control law should go unchallenged.  

We need DOJ to stop defending the NFA & federal gun registration ASAP. https://t.co/wj3dtY5FMs

— Gun Owners of America (@GunOwners) December 8, 2025

That would be great, but I’d also like to see the DOJ stop defending the lifetime ban on gun possession for anyone convicted of a crime punishable by more than a year in prison, as well as taking a more rational approach to Section 922(g)(3)’s prohibition on gun possession for “unlawful” users of drugs that recognizes a majority of states have legalized medical marijuana (and about half the states have done the same with recreational use of cannabis). 

The DOJ’s move to re-establish a rights restoration process for those prohibited persons is a good thing (though 2A orgs have concerns about some of the specifics in the DOJ’s proposed rule), but even if and when that system is up and running it won’t change the fact that someone convicted of a non-violent offense like writing a bad check or falsifying their income on a food stamp application could lose their right to keep and bear arms as a result, even if they’re sentenced to probation instead of prison. 

I have no doubt that the Second Amendment Section within the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division will do important work under Dhillon’s leadership. So long as the DOJ takes a non-adversarial approach to virtually every federal gun control law, though, the complaints from some quarters of the Second Amendment community are going to continue. 

Editor’s Note: The gun control lobby continues to lie about gun owners and the Second Amendment in order to advance their disarmament agenda. 

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