OSD 337: What would a president who cares about gun rights do?
H1 2025 in review
Six months into Trump’s second term, here’s what he has done related to guns:
A new rights restoration process for some categories of felons. This is better than the previous system, which was nothing. But it leaves some easy improvements on the table.
A new (and mixed) approach in court cases. The Department of Justice dropped its appeal in the lawsuit about pistol brace bans, allowing a Fifth Circuit ruling vacating the ban to stand. The DOJ has also: 1) petitioned the Supreme Court to take up a case challenging Hawaiis’s ban on gun carry in most public places, 2) petitioned SCOTUS to take up a case challenging Illinois’s ban on ARs and standard magazines, 3) declined to appeal a Fifth Circuit ruling striking down the ban on handgun purchases for 18-20-year-olds, and 4) in the other direction, defended the lifetime federal ban on gun purchases by felons.
Signed a law which, among many other things, lowered the price of tax stamps for suppressors, short-barreled rifles and short-barreled shotguns, and “any other weapons” to $0. The fact that these provisions got into a reconciliation bill was largely a grassroots effort that came through Congress, not the executive branch, but it’s the keystone change for gun rights so far.
Two more states’ carry permits are good enough to skip NICS. People with carry permits in Michigan and Alabama can now skip the federal background check when they buy a gun.
Let stand a Supreme Court ruling allowing the ATF to ban gun build kits. The executive branch is free to repeal the underlying ATF rule any time but has not done so.
The quick summary of H1: cans and court filings.
More suppressors are awesome, but what’s the full possibility space? We made a big list back in November:
More on that in these two newsletters:
Everything in the list above can be done unilaterally by any president who wants to do it. In that light the score for H1 2025 is “Some work is done, but it’s a small fraction of the work that can be done.”
We’ll see what happens in H2.
This week’s links
Misuse of tourniquets is causing thousands of preventable amputations in the Russia-Ukraine war
Captain Rom A. Stevens, a retired senior US medical navy officer who has served in Iraq, Afghanistan, and East Africa, estimates that of the roughly 100,000 amputations performed on Ukrainian soldiers since Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, as many as 75,000 were caused by improper use of tourniquets.
“I’ve seen tourniquets that have been left on for days, often for injuries that could have been stopped by other methods. Then [the patient] has to have their limb amputated because the tissue has died,” Captain Stevens told The Telegraph.
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"But I still have to do paperwork for a suppressor, I ain't going to get one!"
"Ever fill out a 4473?"
"ThAt'S dIfFeReNt!"