I make no bones about the fact that I was a reluctant "late adopter" when it came to Donald Trump. And in politics as well as sports, I'm a proud fair-weather fan; my allegiance always depends on results.
Who's got time for losers?
I didn't vote for Trump in 2016 (I wrote in Scott Walker). His results in the next four years - well, three years and nine months, anyway - especially his three SCOTUS appointments, were more than good enough compared to the prospect of Joe Biden, who was pretty transparently a third Obama term, to make me pull the lever for him in 2020, notwithstanding some of his behavior during and after the 2020 election cycle. And compared to the inconsequential Kamala Harris and the loathsome Tim Walz? No contest.
And compared with the likely results of a counterfactual Harris/Walz administration in terms of federal regulation, foreign policy, federal judges, censorship, defense, immigration policy, and more, it would take a lot of failing to make Trump look like a bad choice at this point.
But as someone who treats Second Amendment policy as a litmus test for civil liberty in general, Trump is shaping up - at least at the executive branch level, and leaving out a few impromptu flubs - as the best Gun Rights POTUS of my lifetime.
The Administration appears to be following through on the promises it made last spring when it rolled out the Executive Branch's new pro-Second Amendment posture, punctuated by the swearing in of a brand new sheriff at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives:
During his confirmation hearing, career ATF agent Robert Cekada said “ATF’s mission is not to burden lawful gun owners or undermine the Second Amendment. The right to keep and bear arms is a constitutional guarantee, and I’m committed to protecting and preserving it.” That was a breath of regulatory fresh air, but it was also pretty much what you’d expect a nominee to say in front of a GOP-majority committee.
And there was some policy meat on the rhetorical bones:
Other highlights include . . .
- Revising form 4473, including allowing electronic forms and increasing the time NICS checks are valid
- Allowing FFLs to keep electronic records
- Replacing the indefinite retention mandate on 4473s with definite time periods of 20 or 30 years
- Allowing “non-over-the-counter” gun sales by FFLs to residents of the same state
- Repealing the interstate NFA transport notice requirement for trips under one year, with all others no longer requiring approval before travel
- Joint NFA registration for married couples
- Clarify that “common, reasonably necessary activities during travel” are covered by FOPA transportation protection, i.e. you can stop for lunch or to use the bathroom while traveling through anti-gun states without the risk of going to prison
- Allowing the import of dual-use frames, receivers, and barrels
- Clarifying that “training rounds” aren’t ammunition, i.e. Simunitions are civilian-legal again
You know the reforms at BATFE are serious when Everytown rolls out the hit pieces machine - in this case, going after Robert Leider, the BATFE's new chief counsel, for cleaning up some of the more onerous and less useful regulations in the background check process:
In a recent interview with The Reload, Robert Leider, chief counsel of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), discussed the raft of rules proposed by the agency in April that threaten to upend federal gun regulations and allow more guns to fall into the wrong hands. Leider, who helped draft the rules, said the ATF’s goal was “clearing out regulations that unnecessarily burden [gun] dealers” and can lead to license revocations, all to help create a “21st century” firearms market...Under President Biden, the ATF revoked the licenses of gun dealers who willfully violated federal law by failing to conduct background checks on customers or respond to crime gun tracing requests, falsifying records, or refusing to be inspected, among other offenses. But in April 2025, the Trump administration rescinded that “zero tolerance” policy and invited dealers who had their licenses revoked to reapply for them, as discussed in a recent ProPublica report.
Leider said that the goal of the new ATF rules is to go beyond just reversing the “zero tolerance” policy of the prior administration, but to “rip it out root and branch” by cutting regulations that might lead to violations in the first place. According to Leider, “If there’s no underlying regulatory violation, there is nothing in the future to be the subject of future discretionary enforcement actions.”2
If the President could resolve the Iran situation the way he's followed through on Second Amendment issues, this would be a pretty amazing season.
