Gun Control Group Takes Issue With Trump Speeding Up D.C. Carry Processing Times

Anti-gun groups regularly claim that they’re not opposed to the Second Amendment or the right to bear arms at all, they’re just in favor of a few “common sense gun safety regulations” (like banning commonly owne arms, imposing artificial delays on acquiring firearms, and taking guns away without adequate due process, to name a few).

If that really was the case, the gun control lobby would have no issue whatsoever with the recent news from the White House that, thanks to the efforts of the Trump administration, processing times for D.C. carry permit applications have dropped from four months to about four days. 

Instead, that’s one of the many complaints from the gun prohibitionists at Brady contained in a press release blasting the administration for its “efforts to add more guns to D.C. streets”, Brady took issue 

Reporting indicates that the Trump administration is walking back previous statements that guard members would not carry firearms, abruptly ending enforcement of restrictions on civilians carrying shotguns and rifles, in the nation’s capital, and is speeding up the approval of concealed carry permits.

Oddly, the body of Brady’s press release doesn’t mention D.C.’s carry permits at all, though Brady President Kris Brown has a hyperbolic and unhinged take on other actions taken by the administration. 

It doesn’t take an expert to realize that more weapons on our streets won’t decrease crime. If more guns meant less crime, then America would be the safest nation on Earth. But the Trump administration is dangerously escalating its takeover of our nation’s capital by subverting D.C.’s gun laws and militarizing our streets. U.S. Attorney Jeannine Pirro’s announcement that her office will not be prosecuting individuals for carrying rifles and shotguns in violation of D.C.’s laws creates unnecessary confusion for D.C. police and residents alike. Make no mistake, refusals to fully enforce gun laws in the district to score political points has real-world consequences: exposing some of our most sensitive institutions to unnecessary risk and threatening the thousands of ordinary people who live in, visit, and work here every day. Disturbingly, this announcement may serve as an invitation to  extremists and vigilantes that they can march the streets with weapons without threat of felony charges. 

… We can’t let Trump dominate D.C. with a deadly ‘guns everywhere’ agenda, just as we cannot allow this tyranny to be exported to other cities in his sights – like New York, Boston, Chicago, Oakland, and Los Angeles – with significant Black and Brown populations and political leadership. If Trump wanted to reduce crime and make our country safer, the steps are simple: he would return the funds he slashed for community-based violence intervention groups, clamp down on negligent gun dealers that flood cities with illegal guns, and strengthen federal gun safety measures. Instead, he is choosing to disseminate lies about crime designed chiefly to put more guns onto our streets.

So Brady can’t “let” this happen, huh? What exactly is Brady going to do about it, I wonder? The group’s press release is devoid of any call to action, probably because there’s nothing the gun control group can do to stop the Trump administration from taking steps to recognize the inherent and fundamental nature of our right to keep and bear arms. 

Brown’s also wrong about more guns and decreasing crime. We have millions more guns “on the streets” than we did just a couple of years ago, and yet D.C. officials and mayors in other cities are boasting about big drops in violent crime. More guns, less crime isn’t a talking point. It’s reality. In fact, with the exception of the pandemic-related crime spike that began in 2020 and appears to have started subsiding in 2023, violent crime has been trending down in the United States since the early 1990s; a time period that encompasses the right-to-carry revolution, the emergence of permitless carry (now the law in more than half the states), and the sale of well over 100-million firearms. 

As for the scope of the USAO’s new policy regarding rifles and shotguns, we’re still waiting for clarity from Pirro’s office. I did submit some questions to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in D.C. this week asking if individuals carrying rifles and shotguns that are banned under D.C. law would also avoid prosecution and whether the policy applies to non-residents who are carrying rifles and shotguns not registered with the D.C. police, but have yet to hear anything in reply.  We’ll let you know when and if the USAO offers any additional details about the policy, but I’m sure that no matter their response it will have anti-gunners like Brown clutching their pearls. 

Editor’s Note: The radical left will stop at nothing to enact their radical gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights.

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