The DOJ’s Civil Rights Division has been actively working to dismantle some state-level gun control laws since the start of Donald Trump’s second term, but the division is looking to expand those efforts by launching a Second Amendment-specific section within the Civil Rights office. The move, which was first reported by Reuters last week, is expected to be official today, and gun control groups like Brady are lashing out at the decision.
In a press release, Brady head Kris Brown complained that the new office will take resources away from the going after the “traditional and historical discrimination issues that the division has dedicated itself to.”
Even if that proves to be true, that doesn’t mean the Second Amendment section isn’t doing valuable work to end practices that are abusive to our fundamental civil right to keep and bear arms. What really has Brown upset, of course, is that it’s groups like Brady, Everytown, and Giffords who are instrumental in putting those discriminatory policies, practices, and laws in place. The Second Amendment Section will be working to undo those efforts, while Brown and her cohorts will be the ones defending the abuses.
“This new office’s mandate is far from that mission: to challenge gun violence prevention laws — prioritizing the wants of the gun industry over people’s very lives and turning the Trump administration’s ‘guns everywhere’ agenda into a reality,” she kvetched in her press release.
In actuality, the office will be prioritizing we the people’s right to keep and bear arms over the anti-2A whims of politicians and activists like Brown. The Civil Rights Division has already sued the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department over its lengthy delays in processing concealed carry applications, as well as participating in challenges to “assault weapon” bans in Illinois and New Jersey; laws that block access to commonly-owned firearms that are used for a wide variety of lawful purposes.
As NSSF’s Larry Keane writes, the contrast with Biden’s White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention is “remarkable.”
Created in September 2023 and overseen by Vice President Kamala Harris, that office was explicitly designed to coordinate “gun violence prevention” across the federal government, drive new executive actions on gun policy and implement a whole-of-government attack on the lawful and highly regulated firearm industry. It pushed measures like expanded use of so-called “red flag” laws that deny Due Process rights, pressured states to create their own “gun violence offices” and reinterpreted who counts as being “engaged in the business” of selling firearms.
Staffed by a former lobbyist for Everytown for Gun Safety and operated as a taxpayer-funded gun control shop inside the White House, the office never addressed criminal misuse of firearms. Instead, it left fingerprints on efforts to cut funding for school hunter-education programs and on controversial attempts to pressure manufacturers through coordinated litigation strategies — treating the Second Amendment as a problem to be managed.
Conversely, the DOJ’s new Second Amendment Rights Section starts from the premise that the right to keep and bear arms is a freedom to be protected. It has been tasked with enforcing constitutional guarantees when state and local officials slow-walk concealed carry permits, weaponize licensing schemes and otherwise treat law-abiding gun owners and federally licensed retailers as adversaries rather than citizens or engage in lawfare against lawful firearms businesses through unconstitutional gun control-backed laws that try to circumvent the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA).
I don’t know what the first target of the Second Amendment Section will be, but there’s no shortage of abuses to investigate; the year-long wait times for a permit in New York City, the thousands of dollars it takes to obtain a two-year carry permit in some California counties, and the alleged discrimination against Black concealed carry holders in Chicago, to name just a few.
I do know, however, that Brown’s unhinged response to the DOJ’s new Second Amendment Section proves yet again that the gun control lobby is lying when it claims to support “responsible gun ownership.” Brown’s made it crystal clear that she doesn’t see it as a civil right worth protecting, but a problem that can only be “solved” through laws that criminalize the exercise of that right.
Editor’s Note: President Trump is taking historic steps to protect our Second Amendment rights and right to self-defense.
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