Responding to gun owners across the country hoping for relief from restrictive state gun control laws, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms on Monday reached out to U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi to “unleash” the newly-announced Justice Department’s Second Amendment Task Force on a dozen states.
In a letter to Bondi dated Monday, CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb urged Bondi to give gun control laws in the states of California, Colorado, Connecticut, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon and Washington top priority. In each of these states, Democrat-controlled legislatures and governors’ offices have increasingly throttled down on Second Amendment rights over the past several years, and in some cases, decades.
“The time has come,” Gottlieb said in a news release, “to put the anti-rights leadership in these states on notice that their crusade to destroy the individual rights protected by the Second Amendment is finished. On behalf of our members and supporters, we’re hopeful Attorney General Bondi brings the full force of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division against these Draconian gun control laws wherever they have been enacted.”
Gottlieb noted that the gun control push since the Supreme Court’s 2022 Bruen ruling has been stepped up considerably in each of the named states. Washington and Oregon have especially become hotbeds of anti-gun activity over the past few years, and Colorado is running a close second or third place. In Oregon, Democrat lawmakers are pushing bills to implement Measure 114, which is being challenged in state and federal courts.
CCRKBA is involved in a federal lawsuit challenging a semi-auto ban in Maryland, and its sister organization, the Second Amendment Foundation, has been or is currently involved in legal actions in the other states. CCRKBA affiliates in New York and Illinois have successfully challenged gun control laws in their respective states, but in the aftermath of Bruen, Democrat lawmakers have doubled down in their efforts to find ways around that landmark ruling.
In his letter to Bondi, CCRKBA’s Gottlieb asserted that all of the listed states “have adopted laws in recent years which have essentially relegated Second Amendment rights to the level of government-regulated privileges.”
He accused the gun prohibition lobby of engaging in a “culture war” against gun owners and the Second Amendment.
“It is time to put an end to this nonsense,” Gottlieb said, “and remind these zealots that the Bill of Rights is not a menu from which we can pick and choose which parts we want while throwing other parts in the trash.”
In his letter to Bondi, Gottlieb offered “any assistance or input you may need.”
Already, the Task Force is reportedly taking a hard look at concealed carry license application delays by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department in California. This clearly indicates the task force is not just going to focus on federal problems and leave it at that level.
In her April 8 memo to Department of Justice employees, Bondi announced she will chair the Task Force and the Associate Attorney General will serve as vice chair. Other members of the Task Force will include “representatives from my personal staff, the Office of the Deputy Attorney General, the Office of the Associate Attorney General, the Office of the Solicitor General, the Civil Division, the Civil Rights Division, the Criminal Division, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, the Federal Bureau of lnvestigation, and any other components or representatives that I may from time to time designate to assist in the Task Force’s labors.”
