Among the barrage of missives that President Donald Trump (R) signed during his first three weeks back in office was the first executive order in the entire history of the United States designed specifically to protect the right to keep and bear arms.
“The Second Amendment,” the document begins, “is an indispensable safeguard of security and liberty.” As such, it continues, “the Attorney General shall examine all orders, regulations, guidance, plans, international agreements, and other actions of executive departments and agencies (agencies) to assess any ongoing infringements of the Second Amendment rights of our citizens, and present a proposed plan of action to the President.”
As the order makes clear, the most obvious effect of the measure could be to rescind a host of the legal positions that the Biden administration took between “January 2021 through January 2025”—including changing the definition of a “pistol brace,” changing the definition of a person who is “engaged in the business” of selling firearms and changing the definition of a “frame or receiver”—as well as to put a permanent end to the ATF’s disastrous “zero-tolerance” program, which, by design, treated the manufacturers and retailers of guns as if they were the enemy.
Given that, as this was going to print, the U.S. Supreme Court was considering the Biden administration’s attempt to regulate so-called “ghost guns,” the “zero-tolerance” treatment might be the first priority that the White House has in mind for remedial action. But, over the next couple of years, we seem likely to see administrative rulemaking processes that curb the excesses of the Biden administration’s executive gun-control agenda.
In and of itself, this would represent a salutary shift. But, when one looks more closely at the order’s language, one begins to understand that its ambitions are far, far broader than the mere restoration of the status quo. The document refers to “all orders, regulations, guidance, plans, international agreements and other actions.” It seeks to “assess any ongoing infringements.” And this scope is described as the “minimum”!
It is important to remember that, since President Trump was last in office, the U.S. Supreme Court has issued a landmark Second Amendment decision, Bruen, which not only held that all gun laws in the United States must be consistent with the nation’s tradition of firearm regulation, but also placed the burden of proof squarely on the government.
When, as Trump so ordered, the attorney general examines the thicket of rules, directives, regulations and applied statutes, she is certain to find provisions that cannot be squared with Bruen’s standard.
And, after she does, things will get interesting.
As an immediate first step, by the time you’ve received this magazine, the president would likely have been informed of what may be a veritable trove of agency practices that are questionable under Bruen and ought to be revisited, reversed or amended as a matter of urgency.
After that, we may see significant changes in the positions that the White House takes during litigation. A good deal of the minutiae of our federal firearms law was not passed explicitly by Congress but was fleshed out by the executive branch over decades. If the president determines that a portion of that law is illegal according to precedents that have been set by the U.S. Supreme Court in the interim, he will be empowered to act accordingly.
Think of it as an audit by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), but for gun laws that violate the U.S. Constitution.
Bravo.
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