As 2025 draws to a close, it’s time once again to ask that crucial question: Was it good for gun rights? Every year is a mixed bag, as different states head in opposite directions on the matter. But some years are better than others. It seems 2024 was something of a Second Amendment comeback. There were new, stricter gun control laws in some progressive states, of course, but the overall theme was one of advancing liberty. By the end of the year, more than half the states in the Union had honored some form of “constitutional carry,” and federal courts had struck down several state gun laws as unconstitutional. But that was 2024. How does 2025 stack up?
The best place to start in an annual review of gun rights is with the Second Amendment itself:
“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
Many modern thinkers question the meaning of this, but the Founders made it quite plain in their own time, though none so clearly as George Mason, the architect of Virginia’s Declaration of Rights and an inspiration for Thomas Jefferson’s draft of the Declaration of Independence. Mason said during the Virginia Ratifying Convention for the US Constitution in 1788: “I ask, sir, what is the militia? It is the whole people, except a few public officials.” He also declared at the same debate that “to disarm the people is the most effectual way to enslave them.”
Jefferson also famously stood against gun control, arguing in his Legal Commonplace Book: “Laws that forbid the carrying of arms disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes.”
Executive Action and Congressional Commitment to the Second Amendment
In his second term, President Donald Trump seems, for the most part, to be bringing that foundational sentiment held by Mason, Jefferson, and so many other Founding Fathers back to the nation’s capital. He signed an executive order in February directing the attorney general to “examine all orders, regulations, guidance, plans, international agreements, and other actions of executive departments and agencies to assess any ongoing infringements of the Second Amendment rights of our citizens, and present a proposed plan of action to the President, through the Domestic Policy Advisor, to protect the Second Amendment rights of all Americans.”
That’s an easy order to write and sign for a president who simply wants to virtue signal without taking any real action – but that’s not where Trump or Attorney General Pam Bondi took it. In July, the Justice Department announced a groundbreaking change in policy aimed at ending more than 30 years’ worth of infringement. The July 18 announcement began: “President Trump directed the Department of Justice to address the ongoing infringements of the Second Amendment rights of our citizens – all of them.” And in those last three words sat massive change.
The Gun Control Act of 1968 prohibited felons, drug addicts, minors, and those deemed mentally incompetent from owning firearms. But there was a workaround. Initially, prohibited persons could apply for relief at the federal level. The authority to grant or refuse such requests was eventually delegated to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) in 1975 – but the “Schumer Amendment,” passed in 1992 and named for its author, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), prohibited the ATF from spending any of its appropriated funds to process those applications.
To undo this three-decade infringement, AG Bondi revoked that delegation of authority, reclaimed it for the DOJ, and declared that non-violent felons could once again appeal to have their Second Amendment rights restored.
Under Trump’s direction, the ATF replaced its “Zero Tolerance Policy” with a new framework for addressing violations and eased restrictions on some licensees. As well, the Trump administration streamlined the application process for items regulated by the National Firearms Act (NFA) of 1934 so that approval now takes days and sometimes hours instead of months or even years. His One Big Beautiful Bill initially aimed at removing the restrictions of the NFA entirely for silencers, short-barreled rifles, and short-barreled shotguns.
While that failed to clear Congress, the final version still zeroed out the tax requirement – paving the way for multiple lawsuits to challenge the legitimacy of the nation’s first gun control law in its entirety. Another GOP-led bill was introduced to force all 50 states and DC to recognize concealed carry permits from any other state, though it has yet to succeed.
The High Court also picked up several cases in 2025 that have the potential to reshape the legal landscape regarding gun rights. Wolford v. Lopez questions the legality of Hawaii’s law that makes it a crime to carry a weapon on someone else’s private property without explicit permission. United States v. Hemani will determine whether prohibiting people from owning guns if they’re “an unlawful user of, or addicted to any controlled substance” violates the Second Amendment. The High Court is also weighing the constitutionality of gun bans for non-violent felons and people who are otherwise adults under the age of 21.
It may be easy to miss, but 2025 under the new Trump administration has seen massive progress toward addressing long-standing wrongs inflicted on the right of the people to keep and bear arms.
State-by-State: A Mixed Bag for Freedom
The states, of course, produced more variety in results. Washington added a permit-to-purchase requirement for guns, which includes fingerprinting and safety training in addition to the already mandated background checks. Colorado restricted semi-automatic firearms, regulating what it calls “armed intimidation” near election sites, and raised the minimum required age to buy ammunition to 21. California mandated that firearms dealers provide pamphlets on the risks of gun ownership, claiming it increases the likelihood of suicides, homicides, and unintentional injury. Rhode Island became the tenth state to entirely ban so-called “assault weapons.” In these progressive states, it was a bad year for the Second Amendment.
At the state level, the scales seemed to tip a bit in the direction of tyranny in 2025. That, combined with the lack of resolution on several federal-level issues, offset the otherwise positive year for gun ownership. So 2025 held potential for a Second Amendment revival, but left too many questions to be answered until 2026 or later.
Dig Deeper Into the Themes Discussed in This Article!
Liberty Vault: The Constitution of the United States
