By Dave Workman
After President Donald Trump reminded the nation of his commitment to protect the Second Amendment in speeches July 3 at Mount Rushmore and July 4 in Washington, D.C., the New York Times and other paywall-restricted publications are lamenting how the administration “is scrapping more than three dozen firearms regulations.”
Money Control is reporting the changes include a “rollback of efforts to crack down on illegal firearm sales, the easing of oversight of certain private weapons transactions, and the restoration of gun ownership rights for some individuals previously barred because of mental health histories.”
As noted by The Hill, during his Saturday speech at the National Mall, Trump told the audience, “Unlike so many others in the world, in this country we have freedom of speech, freedom of religion, equal justice under the law… And the right to keep and bear arms. And for the almost six years that I was president, I guarded very, very powerfully your Second Amendment.”
Money Control is reporting, “Legal experts expect some of the regulatory changes to face challenges in court, particularly where they alter how existing federal laws are interpreted or enforced. The rollbacks marks one of the Trump administration’s biggest changes to federal firearms policy since returning to office.”
The Trump administration’s rollback of Biden-era restrictions, which underscored the one-term Democrat’s legacy as possibly the most anti-gun president in the nation’s history, have been roundly criticized by gun prohibition lobbying groups.
For example, Everytown Research, an arm of the anti-gun-rights Everytown for Gun Safety, released a report on “Assault Weapons and High Capacity Magazines,” updated last month.
Some of the reactions to Everytown’s announcement on Facebook were comical, others blistering.
Since the U.S. Supreme Court announced it will take two cases challenging semi-auto bans—one in Cook County, Illinois and the other in Connecticut, both filed by involving the Second Amendment Foundation—in the fall, the gun ban lobby has entered panic mode. Should the high court declare modern semi-auto rifles are protected by the Second Amendment, which appears likely, another pillar of the gun ban movement—the first being handgun prohibition—will have been removed.
After that, the next challenges for Second Amendment activism may involve such things as waiting periods, gun registration, permits-to-purchase and/or training mandates. While legacy media have consistently portrayed gun rights court victories as “expanding” Second Amendment rights, Alan Gottlieb, chairman of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, offered a far different perspective in his reaction to the Supreme Court’s Wolford ruling last week.
“The Court isn’t expanding gun rights,” Gottlieb observed, “it is fully restoring rights which decades of unconstitutional gun control have eroded. In the process, these court decisions have been proving we’ve been right all along about what the Founders intended.”
Workman is editor-in-chief of TheGunMag.com
