Gun Owners of America put out the video above making a case that deserves more attention: the Justice Department isn’t keeping pace with the White House on Second Amendment policy. The legal blow-by-blow is GOA’s; the commentary here is mine. I’m Lance Rankin, a Texas FFL and owner of Western Sport in Roanoke, and some of what’s described below lands squarely on shops like mine. Fair warning up front: all of this was current as of this writing, and these cases move quickly, so check the latest status before you rely on any of it.
The good
Credit where it’s due. The administration signed an executive order protecting Second Amendment rights and stood up a task force to go with it. Some wins came from outside the DOJ entirely: HHS cut the CDC and NIH grants that had been funding gun control research, and Treasury moved to stop banks from debanking the firearms industry, a practice that traces back to Operation Chokepoint.
The DOJ has had good moments of its own. It intervened against the Illinois assault weapons ban, arguing the Second Amendment can’t be treated as a second-class right. It also opened a civil rights investigation into the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department over the fees and long waits that were keeping ordinary people from getting carry permits, and it has signaled the probe may widen to other restrictive jurisdictions. That’s the kind of federal attention gun owners have wanted for decades.
The bad
Then there’s Reese v. ATF. The Fifth Circuit struck down the federal ban on licensed dealers selling handguns to adults aged 18 to 20, and when the DOJ declined to appeal, the ruling became binding in Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi. I noticed, believe me; it changed what my counter can legally do. But in September the DOJ argued the victory covers only the individual plaintiffs in the suit, not members of the organizations that brought it, even while admitting the ban conflicts with the Second Amendment. So the government concedes the law is unconstitutional and wants to keep enforcing it against nearly everyone anyway. That’s a strange place to stand.
Same pattern in the Peterson suppressor case, where DOJ lawyers acknowledged suppressors have Second Amendment protection and defended the NFA’s registration scheme anyway. And prosecutions of dealers and sheriffs over machine gun demonstration letters, an enforcement theory left over from the last administration, are still moving forward in some courts.
The ugly
GOA’s sharpest complaint is about tactics. In suits challenging the previous administration’s policies, like the zero-tolerance license revocation policy and the “engaged in the business” rule, DOJ lawyers have stalled, argued cases are moot because the policies aren’t currently being enforced, and refused to abandon the old legal arguments. The practical effect is no permanent injunction and no binding precedent, which leaves the door open for a future administration to switch everything back on. As a dealer who watched zero tolerance treat clerical errors as license-ending offenses, I want that door welded shut, not propped open.
Where I land
I don’t think the President is ordering any of this, and neither does GOA. The likelier story is career lawyers defending their agencies’ old positions out of habit or conviction. Either way, the fix is political attention. If this bothers you, say so to the White House, because the pattern only changes when gun owners make noise about it.
If the dealer side of this is unfamiliar, my what is an FFL dealer post explains how licensing works and why enforcement policy matters to buyers, and the practical rules here at home are in my how to buy a gun in Texas guide. Questions? The shop line is 817-393-4000.
Lance Rankin is the owner and Chief Gunsmith of Western Sport, a family-run Type 07 FFL and Class 3/SOT dealer in Roanoke, Texas, serving shooters since 2007. Born and raised in Texas with over 50 years of experience handling firearms, Lance purchased Western Sport in 2017 and turned his lifelong passion into his profession. He specializes in AR-15 and AR-10 platform rifles, manufactures Western Sport’s own AR-15 line under the Rankin Industries brand, and runs the shop’s in-house Cerakote coating operation. When he’s not behind the counter or the workbench, you’ll find him on his ranch deep into the night, hunting coyotes with an AR-15 and thermal optics. Lance holds an MBA and personally shoots and tests the products Western Sport sells.
