The Trace is Very Worried Trump’s Assault on Lawyers Will Negatively Impact Gun Control

The Second Amendment fight has never been relegated just to the legislatures of this great land or California, either. The battle also takes place in courtrooms across the country. If a gun law is passed, someone will fight it. It doesn’t even matter which side of things the law falls on.

If it’s gun control, naturally, we’re going to fight it, but the other side has lawyers, too.

However, someone who is being very hard on lawyers right now is President Donald Trump. It seems he took four years of lawfare personally, and he’s been going to war with attorneys since taking office. He’s been a busy guy, after all.

Now, this isn’t something we’ve talked about much because we don’t cover lawyers.

But The Trace is very worried. It seems they’re concerned that Trump’s efforts will hurt the gun control effort.

Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison has helped engineer ambitious lawsuits against the firearms industry and provided free legal muscle to gun safety groups and the families of mass shooting victims, allowing them to notch wins against Remington and Smith & Wesson.

Since President Donald Trump targeted Paul Weiss in March, however, prompting firm chairman Brad Karp to cut a controversial deal pledging $40 million in free legal work to support White House priorities, a page on the firm’s website that touted its victories on behalf of gun safety interests has disappeared. Some advocates now fear that the president’s strong-arming will lead Paul Weiss and other firms to curtail such efforts.

“It’s going to have a chilling effect, for sure,” said Robyn Thomas, who spent nearly two decades as executive director and senior legal advisor at Giffords Center to Prevent Gun Violence before leaving in 2022. “Firms are going to operate more quietly and be less aggressive. At least in the short term.”

Oh, darn.

Now, why would this create an issue? Because these firms don’t charge gun control groups full price.

The modern gun safety movement relies on the free or reduced cost legal labor, called pro bono work, that firms provide to advocacy groups and individual plaintiffs. States and local governments nationwide depend on this aid from private firms to defend their firearms restrictions. And proactive litigation that involves bringing suits against the gun industry for alleged misconduct is all but impossible without pro bono support. 

So, if law firms are unable or unwilling to give gun control groups free stuff, then they’re going to be far less able to continue their jihad against the right to keep and bear arms.

And I guess The Trace thinks this is a bad thing.

Honestly, I wasn’t crazy about Trump targeting Paul Weiss in the first place, even if I think it’s a garbage law firm. I’m concerned more about the precedent than anything else and how a future president might interpret it and use it for their own purposes.

However, telling me that the side of the gun debate with very deep pockets will have to pay for their own lawyers isn’t really a solid argument in my book.

In fact, it’s made me a lot more willing to shrug off my concerns about Trump’s assault on Paul Weiss and literally any other law firm he goes after. If no one will back these tools with free legal work, then they’ll have to curtail everything they do to some degree or another. They can’t use all that money to go after pro-gun lawmakers while still engaging in legal battles to try and uphold blatantly unconstitutional gun control laws.

Congrats to The Trace. They made someone who was skeptical about what Trump did on that into a true believer.

Well done!