Beware the Circular Firing Squad

We’re one year out from the national midterm elections, and it’s a good time to start planning for a win in 2026. This is important to prevent anti-gun Democrats from recapturing Congress and effectively putting the brakes on efforts to fully restore the Second Amendment.

The gun control crowd will be watching the outcome of races in Virginia and New Jersey — which happen in odd years — and making hay out of any signs of weakness within conservative pro-gun ranks. This is why voting is important to gun owners — signs of weakness such as poor voter turnout can translate to election catastrophe.

And what is one thing the gun prohibition lobby loves above all else? When gun owners fight amongst themselves, branding this or that candidate a “traitor” or “RINO,” simply because the candidate does not agree 100% with your opinion. This isn’t simply foolish; it is self-destructive. We’ve seen activists call each other names on social media and if we can see it, anti-gunners see it as well.

Here’s the reality: We can publicly disagree amongst ourselves, making each other miserable and lose; or we can politely “agree to disagree,” accept it like adults and go forward to make the other side miserable. Which do you prefer?

Politics, as this column has mentioned previously, is a contact sport and every gun owner is on the playing field. The important point is that we are all on the same team, and we are all going in the same direction.

Attitude Adjustment

In the October 2024 2A Defense column, gun owners were reminded their task was to get a pro-gun administration and Congress elected. We did exactly that, albeit with thin margins, but the important thing is we did it by working together.
At that time, this column offered some goals:

• Fire then-ATF Chief Steve Dettelbach and replace him with someone who actually has a firearms background and can tell the good guys from the bad guys.
Well, guess what, it went better than that. Dettelbach quit a couple of days prior to Donald Trump being sworn in as the 47th President of the United States. Trump initially named Kash Patel as head of the FBI and gave him temporary charge also of the ATF. After a couple of months, Patel was relieved of the additional duties. His replacement was Secretary of the Army Dan Driscoll, named as acting ATF director.

• Immediately abolish the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention.

Once in office, Trump moved fast. Within his first 48 hours, the Biden-Harris government gun control office “went dark.” Anti-gunners had a public fit, but gun owners celebrated quietly for the most part.

To replace the anti-gun nonsense, on Feb. 7, 2025, President Trump issued an executive order, “Protecting Second Amendment Rights.” While 2A Defense takes no credit, it was nice to see the ATF in May replace the 2021 Biden-Harris “Enhanced Regulatory Enforcement Policy (EREP)” — considered a zero-tolerance policy toward licensed firearms dealers — with a new administrative action policy to provide “a fair framework for addressing violations uncovered by a compliance inspection, particularly when those violations do not impact public safety.”

• Congress should launch a performance audit of the ATF… See above. The philosophy at ATF seems to have been changed overnight to leaving good guys pretty much alone and focusing on criminals.

• Appoint an Attorney General who will go after the deprivation of rights under color of law.

Trump named former Florida Attorney General Pamela Bondi as U.S. Attorney General. In April, she announced the creation of a “Second Amendment Task Force,” whose job is to “protect the fundamental right secured by the Second Amendment. The Task Force is principally charged with developing and executing strategies to use litigation and policy to advance, protect, and promote compliance with the Second Amendment.”

The Department of Justice issued a statement, which read in part, “For too long, the Second Amendment, which establishes the fundamental individual right of Americans to keep and bear arms, has been treated as a second-class right. No more. It is the policy of this Department of Justice to use its full might to protect the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens.”

Not bad for the first couple of months in office, eh? There is more.

• Provide full funding for restoration-of-rights investigations by the ATF or some other federal agency and make sure there is congressional oversight.

Recall back in July, the president directed the Justice Department “to address the ongoing infringements of the Second Amendment rights of our citizens — all of them.”

In the announcement from DOJ, it was clearly stated, “Federal law disables the firearms rights of many citizens who have been convicted of crimes without regard to whether they actually pose a threat of violence. But federal law also empowers the Attorney General to restore Second Amendment rights to individuals who are not “likely to act in a manner dangerous to public safety.” Today, the Department of Justice submitted to the Office of the Federal Register a proposed rule regarding the exercise of the Attorney General’s authority under 18 U.S.C. 925(c) to grant relief to individuals who are otherwise precluded from possessing firearms.

• Demand legislation outlawing waiting periods.

At this writing, it hadn’t happened, but it is only one item out of six, which is not a bad track record for an administration in office for 10 months. Maybe we haven’t made the demand loud enough.

Protect Our Gains

Looks like we’re on the right track, so let’s make sure we stay there. Don’t allow frustration to erode confidence. Don’t start fighting amongst one another. Our fight is with gun grabbers, not other gun owners.

Virginia and New Jersey will be decided this month but whatever happens there, the job is to retain and even strengthen a pro-gun majority in Congress. In state legislative races, do what you personally can to advance the Second Amendment agenda so in 2027, our rights will be in better shape than they are right now.

Gun prohibitionists in and out of Congress have demonstrated repeatedly they will go to any lengths to destroy the Second Amendment. It’s up to gun owners — working together — to prevent that from happening. Last year, we called for certain actions and look what has been accomplished so far. Keep it going!