The Department of Justice (DOJ) has announced the establishment of a task force aimed at protecting the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding American citizens.
“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,” Attorney General Pamela Bondi wrote in a Tuesday memorandum to all DOJ employees.
“President [Donald] Trump has made protecting the Second Amendment rights a priority for this administration,” she said.
The attorney general said the president directed her to propose a plan of action designed “to protect the Second Amendment rights of all Americans.”
Bondi said the prime objective of the “Second Amendment Task Force” is to develop policies and legal strategies to “advance, protect, and promote compliance with the Second Amendment.”
The task force, chaired by Bondi, will consist of staff members from her office and from the Deputy and Assistant AGs’ offices, from the Solicitor General’s office, the Civil Division, the Civil Rights Division, the Criminal Division, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF), and the FBI.
Personnel from additional agencies may be summoned to assist in the task force’s operations as needed.
Trump’s Executive Order
The task force serves to implement Trump’s Executive Order 14206, “Protecting Second Amendment Rights,” which instructed the attorney general to review all of the Biden administration’s firearms-related actions.
In a Wednesday press release, Bondi said the “prior administration placed an undue burden on gun owners and vendors by targeting law-abiding citizens exercising their 2nd Amendment rights.”
On Monday, the ATF said it had repealed President Joe Biden’s Enhanced Regulatory Enforcement Policy. The 2021 initiative—also known as the “Zero Tolerance Policy”—set strict inspection standards for arms dealers and allowed the ATF to revoke licenses over minor clerical errors that were previously considered excusable.
“This Department of Justice believes that the 2nd Amendment is not a second-class right,” Bondi said in an ATF press release.
“The prior administration’s ‘Zero Tolerance’ policy unfairly targeted law-abiding gun owners and created an undue burden on Americans seeking to exercise their constitutional right to bear arms—it ends today,” she said.
The DOJ and the ATF are also planning to revise the “stabilizing brace rule” and the boundaries for determining who is considered “engaged in the business” of selling firearms.
The stabilizing brace rule sought to reclassify guns with attached stabilizing braces—accessories originally designed to help people with disabilities shoot pistols more comfortably—as short-barreled rifles, which implies stricter regulations. Critics argued the rule turned millions of law-abiding gun owners into potential felons overnight by reclassifying their legally purchased pistols.
The 2024 “engaged in the business” of firearms dealing rule expanded the definition of who qualifies as a firearms dealer under federal law, which critics said blurred the line between private sales and commercial dealing, potentially criminalizing hobbyists.
Then-acting ATF Director Kash Patel, who was succeeded at the ATF by Army Secretary Daniel P. Driscoll on Wednesday, called the measures “a pivotal step toward restoring fairness and clarity in firearms regulation.”
The DOJ said it will work with gun rights organizations, gun manufacturers, and legal experts over the coming months to ensure that the polices align with Americans’ constitutional rights.
From NTD News
