Gun Control Industry Harpies Apoplectic About Trump DOJ’s Active Defense of Second Amendment Rights

Gun control groups are clutching their pearls again. This time they’re aghast over the notion that President Donald Trump’s administration is defending Second Amendment rights as the Constitutionally-protected rights they actually are. It’s more telling of the gun control cabal’s meltdown that their preferred narrative is losing out to the letter of the law.

USA Today reported, “Trump DOJ wants Supreme Court to bring down hammer on gun rules,” noting the Department of Justice’s recent moves to secure Second Amendment rights for law-abiding citizens instead of attacking them. The DOJ, in recent months, declined to petition to the U.S. Supreme Court a lower court’s decision that found that the federal law prohibiting handgun sales to adults under 21 violated the U.S. Constitution. The DOJ also urged the Supreme Court to strike down state laws prohibiting lawful concealed carry permit holders from carrying their firearms on private property without express consent of that property owner.

Here’s the most damning accusation. USA Today accused President Donald Trump of pledging “fidelity” to gun rights groups and the Second Amendment. True, President Trump did tell gun owners he would stand up for their interests against unconstitutional gun control and the politically-driven antigun agenda of some Members of Congress. It’s also true that he pledged to defend the Second Amendment.

Here’s the part that USA Today left out. That’s part of the president’s Oath of Office. They must have missed the part when he said, “… will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

It’s a part of every presidential oath. However, it also shows how comfortable antigun groups and supporters grew with the unconstitutional efforts by the Biden administration to undermine, suppress and attack Second Amendment rights and the firearm industry that provides the means to exercise those rights.

DOJ Stands for the Second Amendment

This is what’s got USA Today and gun control groups in a tizzy. U.S. Solicitor General John Sauer wrote, “The United States has a substantial interest in the preservation of the right to keep and bear arms and in the proper interpretation of the Second Amendment,” when he explained why the DOJ is urging the Supreme Court to consider Wolford v. Lopez, a challenge to Hawaii’s law requiring consent for a law-abiding concealed carry permit holder to carry a firearm on private property.

Only in their politically coddled fantasyland would the idea of a right – granted by a Creator and expressly included in the Bill of Rights with the language “shall not be infringed” – be considered a reason to lose their collective minds.

“For the government to step back and say, ‘Hey, here’s a major piece of federal firearms legislation that was passed by Congress; we’re just not going to bother to defend it any longer,’ that’s a really, really significant thing,” said Esther Sanchez-Gomez, litigation director for the Giffords Law Center, according to USA Today.

Giffords Law Center is conveniently ignoring that all adults are fully-vested in all of their civil rights when they are adults. At 18 years of age, Americans can choose to exercise First Amendment rights, Fourth and Fifth Amendment rights, but somehow, Second Amendment rights are off-limits for another three years.

Supreme Court Getting Ready?

Even sitting justices on the U.S. Supreme Court have been vocal about the idea that the Second Amendment has been relegated to a “second-class right.” Justice Clarence Thomas has said as much. Justices Thomas and Brett Kavanaugh expressed their clear frustration with the Supreme Court’s refusal in 2020 to hear Rogers v. Gurbir, challenging New Jersey’s requirement that in order to exercise your Second Amendment right to bear arms – that is to carry a firearm on your person for self-protection – you must demonstrate to the state a “justifiable need” or a “good reason.”

As Justices Thomas and Kavanaugh noted, “This Court would almost certainly review the constitutionality of a law requiring citizens to establish a justifiable need before exercising their free speech rights. And it seems highly unlikely that the Court would allow a State to enforce a law requiring a woman to provide a justifiable need before seeking an abortion.” Yet, when faced with such a restriction on the Second Amendment, “the Court simply looks the other way.”

Justices Thomas and Neil Gorsuch vented their frustration with the Supreme Court’s refusal to grant review in the Peruta v. California case in 2017. Justice Thomas wrote the case “reflects a distressing trend: their treatment of the Second Amendment as a disfavored right.” He added, “For those of us who work in marbled halls, guarded constantly by a vigilant and dedicated police force, the guarantees of the Second Amendment might seem antiquated and superfluous. But the Framers made a clear choice: They reserved to all Americans the right to bear arms for self-defense.”

Unconstitutional Bans in Their Sights

Gun Control Inc.’s near-panic could be that they see the door closing on their vaunted “assault weapons” bans. The Supreme Court refused to hear challenges to bans on Modern Sporting Rifles (MSRs) in Snope v. Brown and bans on standard capacity magazines in Ocean State Tactical v. Rhode Island earlier this year.

Justice Thomas was again frustrated. He wrote in his dissent from the Court’s failure to take Snope, “I doubt we would sit idly by if lower courts were to so subvert our precedents involving any other constitutional right. Until we are vigilant in enforcing it, the right to bear arms will remain ‘a second-class right.’”

Justices Thomas, Alito and Gorsuch all noted their dissent from the Court’s decision to decline to take up Snope or Ocean State Tactical.

After the Supreme Court declined to hear the two cases, the DOJ urged the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals to uphold a federal district court’s decision concluding that Illinois’ MSR and standard capacity magazine ban violates the Second Amendment. In that challenge, Barnett v. Raoul, NSSF is a plaintiff, and the federal district court ruled after holding an extensive bench trial and considering thousands of pages of evidence.

DOJ filed a powerful amicus brief supporting NSSF and the other challengers to the law. “Because the Act is a total ban on a category of firearms that are in common use by law-abiding citizens for lawful reasons, it is flatly unconstitutional,” DOJ lawyers wrote.

Gun control’s charade to disarm the American public is ending. That’s why the panic is setting in. They’re lashing out against the Trump administration because the administration refuses to play along with their unconstitutional antics. It seems that only now are they realizing that their decades of abusing the rights of law-abiding citizens isn’t just frustrating the Supreme Court. They no longer have willing allies to carry out their anti-gun agenda in the White House.

 

Larry Keane is SVP for Government and Public Affairs, Assistant Secretary and General Counsel of the National Shooting Sports Foundation.