A new Second Amendment Rights Section within the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division marks a dramatic shift in federal priorities, placing gun ownership alongside traditional civil rights protections for racial discrimination and equal protection under the law.
On December 4, 2025, the U.S. Department of Justice uploaded its new Second Amendment Rights Section into its Civil Rights Division. The mission is “to redefine civil rights with policies championed by conservatives, a departure from traditional civil rights issues including racial discrimination and policing.” The following essay spotlights a remarkable shift in the allocation of civil rights enforcement resources.
Executive order on gun rights
This novel initiative was triggered by President Trump’s early second-term Executive Order (E.O.), “Protecting Second Amendment Rights.” It stated that the Second Amendment “is foundational to maintaining all other rights held by Americans, [so] the right to keep and bear arms must not be infringed.” (italics added). One can interpret this articulation to mean that other established civil rights‒e.g., the U.S. Constitution’s Bill of Rights‒now hinge on integrated enforcement via the abruptly elevated right to bear arms.
The Plan of Action affiliated with the E.O. calls upon the U.S. Attorney General to “examine all orders, regulations, guidance, plans, international agreements … to assess any ongoing infringements of the Second Amendment rights of our citizens, and present a proposed plan … to protect the Second Amendment rights of all Americans. Its political raison d’être is evinced by the Plan’s directive that “the Attorney General shall review, at a minimum … [a]ll Presidential and agencies’ actions from January 2021 through January 2025 [President Biden’s term of office] that purport to promote safety but may have impinged on the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens….”
Undoing the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention
One of those Biden-era actions was his inauguration of the Office of Gun Violence Prevention. It was the first-ever White House office of this nature. Its seemingly unassailable mission was designed to take “more meaningful executive action than any other president to make our schools, churches, grocery stores, and communities safer … [and] empowering the Justice Department with new authorities to prosecute firearms traffickers, improving access to mental health services in our schools to help young people deal with the trauma and grief resulting from gun violence, and investing in community violence interventions.”
Trump scrapped this less than two-year-old Biden initiative. It was unacceptable to the current Republican Administration because it called for “Banning assault weapons and high-capacity magazines; Requiring safe storage of firearms; Requiring background checks for all gun sales; [and]Eliminating gun manufacturers’ immunity from liability.” There are a number of cases percolating through the state and federal courts regarding assault weapons, magazines, storage, and background checks. Their status is accessible via websites including Gun Case Tracker (briefs, orders, and statuses of important gun-related litigation from around the country).
Putting gun rights on par with civil rights
The DOJ has just installed the Second Amendment Rights Section as the executive engine for driving the U.S. Attorney General’s complimentary task force. As a result, according to the A.G. Memo, “federal firearms licensees should expect to see ATF’s enforcement priorities change [loosen] in the coming months.” The Trump Administration’s East Wing-like replacement entity will thus vilify the following gun control initiatives:
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Biden-era executive agency actions allegedly restricting firearm rights
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The suddenly suspect reports and policies from the defunct Biden White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention
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Proposed gun industry controls.
Pursuant to Trump’s far reaching Executive Order, the Attorney General confirmed that “[t]he Task Force is principally charged with developing and executing strategies to use litigation and policy to advance, protect, and promote compliance with the Second Amendment.” The “litigation” element of this directive will presumably solidify the theme that the federal government is coming after existing laws and prosecutions standing in the way of Trump-era conservative values. Thus: “[f]or 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. It is the policy of this Department of Justice to use its full might to protect the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens.” This articulation classically illustrates the former president’s gun control program versus the current gun rights political divide.
The wolf in sheep’s clothing
The DOJ Civil Rights Division’s new embrace of the Second Amendment, as a primary civil right, is a classic wolf in sheep’s clothing. This startling approach purports to effectively align the Second Amendment with the Bill of Rights, the 1965 Civil Rights Act, and the deluge of individual civil rights embraced by prior legislative, judicial, and social institutions. Trump’s Executive Order actually places Second Amendment civil rights on a pedestal‒evinced by its above-quoted claim that the Second Amendment “is foundational to maintaining all other rights held by Americans.” The DOJ’s longstanding mission places it at the apex of civil rights enforcement. As Carol Leoning and Aaron Davis point out in Injustice: How Politics and Fear Vanquished America’s Justice Department, “[n]o federal agency more fully embodies the principles of American freedom and fairness. And no employees … carry more responsibility than those of the Justice Department to uphold and defend the founding principles enshrined in the U.S. Constitution.”
It seems obvious to me that President Trump’s E. O., augmented by the current Attorney General’s Memorandum, are tips of a political spear that thrusts the federal government’s civil rights commitment away from core guardrails portrayed by one of Aesop’s Fables: “One day the wolf found a sheepskin that had been thrown away. … Even the shepherd was deceived by the ruse.”
President Trump and Attorney General Bondi of course believe that their course of action‒advancing gun rights to front-of-the-line civil rights‒rectifies the historically second-class nature of the Second Amendment. They are not alone in their belief, as lamented by various Supreme Court justices.
But I doubt I’m alone in believing that this nation’s primordial civil rights regime will be devalued by the new Civil Rights Department’s implied characterization of gun rights as the most prominent of civil rights. Consider the iconic civil rights statutes and litigation of the last 50 years involving, inter alia, racial discrimination; gender discrimination; sexual orientation; desegregation; equal protection of the law; and due process of law.
In contrast, I do not see how my right to gun ownership is in the same ballpark as those towering civil rights. One hopes that introducing the new Second Amendment Rights Section into the DOJ’s existing Civil Rights Division‒like an emblematic month of March‒comes in like a lion, but goes out like a lamb.
Bill Slomanson is Distinguished Professor Emeritus, Thomas Jefferson School of Law. This article first appeared in the Los Angeles & San Francisco Daily Journal, December 8, 2025, and is reprinted here with permission.
