In a nearly three-minute long video posted on X, Department of Justice (DOJ) official Harmeet Dhillon says, “I’m really excited about this. For the first time, the DOJ Civil Rights Division and the DOJ at large will be protecting and advancing our citizens’ right to bear arms as part of our civil-rights work.”
Dhillon, who is as an assistant attorney general for the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, explains that “a lot more action” on the protection of citizens’ Second Amendment-protected rights will be taken by the agency.
This isn’t all new, as news broke recently that the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division was creating a Second Amendment section and the DOJ has already taken some action in California about delays in approving concealed-carry permits, but the boldness and energy behind protecting this civil right from the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division is historically new.
“As Attorney General Pam Bondi has said, the Second Amendment is not a second-class right, and I couldn’t agree more with my boss,” says Dhillon.
Dhillon explains in the video that the DOJ will take legal action in state and local courts to challenge high fees and delays that block peoples’ Second Amendment rights.
“Some of the things we’re seeing, and that is going to be the focus of our work around the country, includes multi-thousand-dollar costs for citizens to apply for concealed-carry permits,” says Dhillon.
“Other jurisdictions are having unreasonably long delays. Other jurisdictions are outlawing guns that should be protected by the Second Amendment under the recent Supreme Court precedent,” says Dhillon.
She also says that law-abiding citizens’ right to keep and bear arms “equalizes the ability of those of us, women, people with disabilities, and others who might otherwise be more vulnerable to be able to protect ourselves.”
For this and other reasons she says, “We will be protecting that right here in this Department of Justice. The president issued an executive order making this clear just two weeks into his tenure, and I’ve been working on the Second Amendment section ever since I got here to the DOJ.”
“So stay tuned,” says Dhillon. “You’re going to see a lot more action from this Department of Justice to protect your Second Amendment rights.”
Predictably, gun-control groups are freaking out about DOJ legal challenges to infringements on this civil right.
Kris Brown, the president of the gun-control group Brady, for example, spun this announcement from the DOJ by sayingthat it is “prioritizing the wants of the gun industry over people’s very lives and turning the Trump administration’s ‘guns everywhere’ agenda into a reality.”
This, of course, is a freedom issue, not a “gun industry” initiative. Peoples’ lives do need protection: law-abiding citizens need to be able to defend themselves until help arrives. And it is hardly a “guns everywhere agenda.”
