DOJ Civil Rights Division head Harmeet Dhillon has been the shining Second Amendment bright spot of the Trump administration’s almost schizophrenic approach to gun rights. She’s done more than stood firm; she’s gone out and aggressively addressed state and local governments’ attempts to restrict people’s gun rights. She set up the Second Amendment Section of her division to focus on these issues, even.
But the problem is that for every lawsuit they file, there are 12 or more laws out there that we know also need to be addressed.
What’s more, in a recent interview, Dhillon made it clear that she knows.
Dhillon admitted that there were far more potentially unconstitutional gun control laws than the Second Amendment Section could tackle right away.
“I think it’s safe to say that we have many, many targets throughout the United States,” Dhillon said. “We’re familiar with all of these developments. We attend gun shows regularly and gun events. We have an open-door policy here vis-a-vis people who wanna bring things to our attention, but we have to prioritize based on our resources and our other enforcement priorities at the Department of Justice.”
“Every time I announce new action, I get a bunch of people criticizing us for ‘Now do this, now do that,’” Dhillon added. “I mean, that’s not how we do impact civil rights litigation. We don’t necessarily go after every single target. We have to pick and choose the ones that are gonna make the biggest impact and that there should be a trickle-down effect from that.”
I’m not faulting Dhillon for failing to go out and attack every unconstitutional gun law in the country all at once. That’s just not realistic given the resources that can be brought to bear, even though the feds have deeper pockets than any gun rights organization ever could.
No, the problem I have has nothing to do with Dhillon or the Second Amendment Section of her division. The problem I have is that this should have been a thing all along.
I get that different attorneys general and different presidents are going to have different priorities. That’s normal and, while I don’t think it’s necessarily right, that will often include what the Civil Rights Division should focus on. That doesn’t mean, however, that they should ignore everything else.
I honestly can’t recall a single case where the Department of Justice stepped in and took a stance defending gun rights before Dhillon did so in 2025. The reason the Second Amendment section can’t address all of the gun control laws in the country that are unconstitutional is that literally no one else did that job before this president’s second term.
They simply can’t keep up with the demand because everyone else ignored it for so long.
Don’t try to tell me no one viewed the Second Amendment as a second-class right while also thinking it’s bizarre that the Civil Rights Division of the DOJ is addressing gun control. Those two things simply don’t mesh in any way, shape, or form.
I’m just glad someone started. It’s up to us to demand whoever is next continues it.
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