WASHINGTON — Soon after President Donald Trump took office last year, he issued an executive order proclaiming his steadfast support for the right to bear arms, but a year later, gun rights advocates say the administration has failed to live up to his promises.
Even as the administration has challenged some state firearms laws, it is also defending long-standing federal gun restrictions in court, including one being considered by the Supreme Court on Monday. That case concerns whether users of illegal drugs can be barred from possessing guns.
Gun rights advocates who are challenging those laws say they are frustrated to see the Trump administration defending the restrictions.
“The Trump administration has been very good on gun rights issues that are coming up in the states. The same isn’t true at the federal level,” said Cody Wisniewski, president of the Firearms Policy Coalition Action Foundation.
While the federal government generally has a duty to defend federal law, there have historically been exceptions when the Justice Department concludes a particular measure is unconstitutional.
Wisniewski expressed some bafflement at the government’s strategy, adding: “I haven’t received an explanation.”
Aidan Johnston, director of federal affairs at Gun Owners of America, similarly praised Trump for taking some actions to further gun rights, but criticized the Justice Department for a “very mixed record on the Second Amendment” overall.
Trump and some members of his administration also recently angered Second Amendment supporters with comments they made after a federal agent killed protester Alex Pretti in Minneapolis. “Certainly, he shouldn’t have been carrying a gun,” Trump said at the time, echoing comments from other senior officials.
The net result of the Trump administration’s case-by-case consideration of gun rights is that in Monday’s Supreme Court case, the Trump administration is on the same side as gun safety groups like the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence.
“I can understand why they are getting a lot of heat, looking at what they are doing in court and what they are saying,” Brady Center President Kris Brown said of the Justice Department. “It’s impossible to conclude there’s any real consistency in how the administration approaches the issue of firearms.”
Asked for comment for this story, Abigail Jackson, a White House spokeswoman, said in a statement: “President Trump has been consistent for many years: he is an unapologetic supporter of Second Amendment rights for law-abiding citizens. The Trump Administration will always defend and protect Americans’ constitutional right to bear Arms.”
The Justice Department did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
Trump’s Feb. 7, 2025, executive order told the Justice Department to conduct a review and come up with a plan of action to protect the Second Amendment.
“Because it is foundational to maintaining all other rights held by Americans, the right to keep and bear arms must not be infringed,” the order said.
In June, senior Justice Department official Harmeet Dhillon, who heads the civil rights division, announced a special unit that would oversee gun rights cases. Traditionally, the division has focused on cases involving such issues as racial discrimination and voting rights.
The administration has, among other things, backed legal challenges to some state restrictions, including opposing a Hawaii measure barring people possessing guns from entering private property open to the public without permission. The Supreme Court heard oral arguments in that case in January.
The Justice Department has also sued the District of Columbia, the U.S. Virgin Islands and the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, claiming various gun rights infringements.
Dhillon has loudly proclaimed her backing of gun rights on social media, saying in one X post last April that “Gun rights are civil rights.”
In a December post, she said the Second Amendment is a “top priority” for the administration. Dhillon, via the Justice Department, did not respond to an interview request.
Trump himself has sometimes sounded equivocal about gun rights, as reflected in comments he made after the Pretti shooting, including telling reporters, “You can’t have guns” in the situation Pretti was in. Trump also did not mention the subject during his recent State of the Union address.
In Trump’s first term, he pushed for a ban on bump stocks, which allow semiautomatic rifles to fire more quickly, following a mass shooting in Las Vegas. But the measure was ultimately struck down by the Supreme Court.
For gun control advocates, the administration’s positioning reflects the difficult task of trying to keep Second Amendment absolutists happy while also projecting a strong law and order message regarding gun violence.
“Trump needs to balance appeasement of an unpopular and extremist gun lobby with the clear political reality that gun safety is popular and effective,” argued Nick Suplina, senior vice president of law and policy at Everytown for Gun Safety, which advocates for greater restrictions on firearms.
The world of gun rights litigation remains in upheaval following the landmark 2022 Supreme Court ruling that recognized for the first time a right to carry a firearm outside the home.
As a result, a host of new legal challenges to old laws were launched. But the Supreme Court itself suggested in a 2024 ruling, which upheld a restriction on people accused of domestic violence possessing firearms, that it does not think all gun restrictions are presumptively invalid.
One of the laws currently in the firing line is the federal restriction on drug users possessing firearms, a measure that attracted headlines when President Joe Biden’s son Hunter was charged with violating it. Hunter Biden was convicted but later pardoned by his father.
The case being heard by the Supreme Court on Monday concerns Ali Danial Hemani, an alleged regular user of marijuana who was charged with violating the law.
The Trump administration is defending the law, with Solicitor General D. John Sauer saying in court papers that it is consistent under the Second Amendment for the government to “temporarily disarm categories of dangerous persons.”
Sauer conceded that “the government bears a significant burden in justifying restrictions” on the Second Amendment. But, he added, “This case presents narrow circumstances where the government can satisfy that rigorous burden.”
Second Amendment advocates largely take an absolutist position on gun regulations, viewing any restriction as unconstitutional.
The administration’s approach to two other federal restrictions has also drawn scrutiny from gun rights supporters.
Sauer recently asked the Supreme Court not to hear, at least for now, gun rights challenges to laws that bar 18- to 20-year-olds from purchasing firearms and prohibit anyone convicted of a felony from possessing a gun. His filings mostly avoided discussion of whether the measures are constitutional, focusing more on technical reasons why the Supreme Court should not get involved at this stage.
Activists like Wisniewski say they understand that lawyers in the administration at times make litigation decisions that take into account their chances of winning at the Supreme Court.
But, he added, he and others believe the right to bear arms is a basic human right that should not be subject to any nuance.
“Anything that diverges or goes against that is not only a violation of the Second Amendment but also just offensive,” he said.
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