The Trump Administration Is Still Straddling the Fence on Gun Rights

When it comes to gun rights, the Trump administration has what, at first glance, appears to be a very confused stance. But is it really as it seems? Last year, President Donald Trump signed into law the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which, among a great many other things, removed the $200 fee for registering certain items in accordance with the National Firearms Act of 1934. Yet as recently as about a week ago, the DOJ defended the NFA registration for suppressors, only giving up the fight when a federal judge ruled it now unconstitutional. This isn’t the only example in recent years – but a closer look at the apparent conflict of interest might reveal something deeper.

Suppressing the NFA

As Liberty Nation News’ Graham J Noble reported shortly after the ruling: “On August 5, Judge James Wesley Hendrix of the US District Court for the Northern District of Texas agreed with a challenge to registration requirements contained in the NFA because the justification for those requirements was now moot.” The NFA, of course, was presented as a tax bill in order to circumvent the Second Amendment by not technically banning anything. If you can afford to pay, you get to play, so to speak.

Now, of course, that argument hasn’t stood up to judicial review in other cases – hence why poll taxes are no longer a thing. But it sufficed under a Democratic Party trifecta in a more progressive era suffering the massive spike in violent crime brought on by prohibition. And, as is so often the case, once something has been accepted for enough years, it settles into tradition and history.

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But while the original draft of the OBBBA that would have removed that entire section of the NFA failed, the version that did pass still rendered it moot by removing the tax itself. If the registration and permitting process exists only to track who has paid the tax, then removing the tax removes the legal justification for the rest. That was the argument made by plaintiffs in numerous cases since, and that was the argument Judge Hendrix agreed with earlier this month.

But the DOJ under President Trump – despite being the very administration that saw that law changed through – still fought in defense of the requirement. More recently, as LNN reported, the Justice Department declined to appeal the decision. This was called by some the greatest gun rights win for Americans since the Second Amendment itself. But was it, really? As we explained in that previous post, due at least in part to recent restrictions on district courts issuing nationwide injunctions, the ruling only applies to the defendants in the case, their customers, and their members. So, yes, you can buy a short-barreled rifle or suppressor now, but it has to be from the Silencer Shop or one of its affiliates.

Now, it could be that President Trump and administration officials really did want to drop the case and be on the side of gun rights rather than gun control. But it could also just as easily be true that the DOJ did as it initially said it would and evaluated the ruling’s impact on the law, then determined that it was better to cut bait and fish elsewhere than to keep fighting and risk a higher court gutting the NFA entirely.

Not the Only Gun Rights Conundrum

This isn’t the administration’s only gun rights conundrum, though. Under the president’s guidance and executive orders, the DOJ issued a rule change in March of 2025 that revoked the delegation of authority from the Attorney General to the ATF to reinstate federal gun rights for felons. At first, it seemed like a major step for the administration’s Second Amendment agenda.

But does that impression hold up now, more than a year later? Well, the online portal where people will supposedly eventually be able to apply for relief has yet to launch. As such, the DOJ has restored the gun rights of precisely zero nonviolent felons to date about 17 months after the announcement. The final rule change has yet to be implemented, you see.

Meanwhile, however, the Justice Department has used the fact that it has revoked that delegation and could reinstate the right as legal justification for why the lifetime ban remains constitutional after New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc., v. Bruen.

Well, isn’t that a convenient coincidence? To answer the somewhat sarcastic question – maybe it is; maybe it isn’t.

The Trump administration has moved to reset gun rights to what they were before Joe Biden’s presidency, and it has even gone further, seemingly rolling back (or preparing to roll back) longstanding gun control measures like the NFA. And, of course, we likely wouldn’t have these rulings like Bruen and, more recently, the case in Texas without Trump. Judge Hendrix is one of his appointees, after all, as are the most recent three of the conservative majority on the Supreme Court.

Still, for the DOJ to continue to fight in defense of gun control seems counter  to the stated agenda of deregulation. And these administration decisions like declining to appeal in Texas and revoking the ATF’s already legislatively blocked authority to reinstate gun rights might not be the Second Amendment wins they seem to be.