This week, we're looking at how the Department of Justice (DOJ) has performed on gun policy during the second Trump Administration and why Jeanine Pirro's newest legal filing could change the review.
To examine the DOJ's track record, we have the Second Amendment Foundation's Kostas Moros on the show. He has been willing to defend the administration's overall approach to gun policy and to criticize moves he believes are likely to produce significant setbacks. He argued that the DOJ has actually been as pro-gun as any in modern history.
In fact, he said a lot of the disappointment from online gun activists stems from bad expectation setting. He argued the DOJ was never likely to stop defending all federal gun laws, nor would that move guarantee the kind of gun-rights wins some believe it would. He also said the administration's moves to sue localities over alleged violations of the Second Amendment, as well as their efforts to back gun-rights challenges, even up to the Supreme Court, create a positive case for why it has been a good ally to gun-rights activists.
Still, Moros admitted the DOJ has been pretty all over the place in its arguments at times. And he further criticized a new legal filing that stands to undermine a serious breakthrough in the gun-rights movement's fight against magazine bans. He said Jeanine Pirro, who Donald Trump appointed as US Attorney for Washington, DC, and who he is reportedly considering making the Attorney General, intervened to ask a DC court to reconsider its ruling against the city's magazine ban.
Moros argued Pirro didn't need to say anything at all, given that she isn't actively defending the law, and that her filing makes it more likely the case will be reheard. That, he noted, could undermine the all-important circuit split on the question of magazine bans. Ultimately, Moros argued, that could keep the Supreme Court from settling the question and further sour gun activists' view of the administration.