For as much as I’ve mellowed on the libertarian shit, I’m starting to regret as a younger man I didn’t just put all my money into gold and machine guns.
I usually avoid quoting long posts in their entirety. I’m making an exception for this because there is stuff here that I was unaware of. Independently any one of these would just be a speed bump for the next anti-gunowner administration. Together, combined with what is coming down the road in the next few years, this is closer to a brick wall.
The second Trump Administration has thus far exceeded all expectations when it comes to its nearly unprecedented defense of the Second Amendment. While Trump’s first term gave us hugely important wins on judicial appointments at SCOTUS and the lower courts, that was just about all we got. This term is much different. We are still getting good judicial picks, but are also making so much more progress beyond that baseline. This has been the first time any Department of Justice has meaningfully championed the Second Amendment since the days of the Freedmen’s Bureau during Reconstruction.
Given that, I thought it made sense to maintain a list summarizing the Trump Administration’s actions related to gun rights. I will do my best to keep this updated. If you can think of important things I missed, list them in the comments below.
LAST UPDATED: September 4, 2026.
General News
1. President Trump issues an executive order to defend the Second Amendment and directing further action.
5. US concedes inUS v. Petersonthat suppressors enjoy some degree of Second Amendment protection and may not be totally banned (an important concession to be used in states with total bans).
6. “Big Beautiful Bill” zeroes the tax on suppressors and SBRs, though registration requirement remains(Update: enjoined for now, at least as to members of the Plaintiffs orgs in two cases). ATF manages the application surge smoothly.
7. Department of Veterans Affairs ceases reporting Veterans to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System as “prohibited persons” only because they need help from a fiduciary in managing their VA benefits.
13. A number of judges have been confirmed to the lower courts, including Emil Bove and Jennifer Mascott in the Third Circuit, both of whom played a role in securing the first circuit court win on “assault weapon” and magazine bans.
14. After losing NFA consolidated cases ofSilencer Shop v. ATFandJensen v. ATF, DOJ decides against seeking to stay the District Court injunction, meaning the registration requirements are unenforceable against the Plaintiffs in the case. But questions remain as of August 13, 2026, including whether DOJ will appeal.
🚨 BREAKING: I’ve received confirmation from the Trump Administration that the DOJ will NOT appeal our historic court victory against the NFA.
THANK YOU, PRESIDENT TRUMP and Attorney General Blanche, for delivering the most significant Second Amendment win in OVER 90 YEARS!
15. In an Office of the Legal Counsel Opinion, DOJ concludes that Section 930(d)(3) of title 18, U.S. Code, permits the lawful carrying of constitutionally protected firearms in post offices that are generally open to the public. (This follows SAF’s win on the issue inFPC, et al. v. Bondi).
16. Tate Adamiak, George Peterson, and others convicted of constitutionally questionable gun-related crimes pardoned.
Tate Adamiak endured what amounts to political persecution. His convictions under the Biden administration were premised on major factual misrepresentations by the government and had significant constitutional infirmities, as we recently argued in an amicus brief in his favor.… pic.twitter.com/dtv3GBbDn2
— National Association for Gun Rights (@gunrights) September 4, 2026
Civil Rights Lawsuits
1. Sued Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department over its years-long wait times for carry permits. They cited SAF’s lawsuit in their initial pattern-or-practice investigation too.
In its amended complaint against Washington DC's "assault weapon" ban, the US DOJ has now added a claim that the District's total ban on suppressors is also unconstitutional. pic.twitter.com/diptits9Zv
1. Massive rights restoration process being implemented, with Final Rule published on August 17, 2026. While imperfect (SAF submitted a comment letter, and the final rule addressed some of our concerns), it’s probably the biggest step forward on this front we have yet to see.
2. ATF rule proposed to tighten up the definition of “unlawful user of a controlled substance.” This will help plenty of casual drug users, as well as people who the government can’t prove are anything but casual users.
2. They have also filed amicus briefs in the 3rd and 7th Circuit AWB/mag ban cases, calling such bans unconstitutional. Harmeet Dhillon participated in oral arguments in the 7th Circuit.
1. Their ongoing defense of the NFA.Update as of August 12, 2026: According to Rep. Clyde, DOJ will no longer defend the NFA’s registration requirements. Many questions to be answered, however, and it’s not clear currently if they will simply not seek a stay, or not appeal at all.
2. They also defend other laws too like the Gun free School Zones Act, even as applied to those walking around their own front yard or only just slightly off of it.
3. No pardon/commutation (at least not yet) for guys likeAdamiak andHoover. This one is disappointing because President Trump has not been shy about issuing other pardons and commutations. Preposterous someone like George Santos gets released while Adamiak sits in jail.
September 4, 2026 update: Adamiak and some others have been pardoned. Hoover has not been yet, though.
4. Scope of relief issue. Relief should not be limited to only those who are members of the association at the time a lawsuit was filed, as the government now argues. That would break the whole point of associational standing and force us to do costly class actions instead. Fortunately, it seems DOJ has backed off of this extreme position, albeit with some pressure from the courts.
5. RushingHemaniand its bad facts to the front of the line of marijuana cases (though this one ended up working out for us with a great ruling from SCOTUS inHemani).
7. Benson betrayal: DOJ (Jeannine Pirro) files brief urging DC Court of Appeals to grant rehearing en banc. This is another one that seems to have ended up OK, thanks to the Third Circuit giving us a circuit split anyway. But it was still a needless error.
California’s state legislature employs some of the busiest and most creative anti-gun staffers in the world, who operate in an atmosphere of nearly complete permissiveness.
Whatever lunacy these well-schooled goons propose has an extremely high likelihood of becoming state law, especially if it targets guns or shaves a chunk off of the Second Amendment protections enjoyed by free people living in free states.
Want to buy a Glock?
Sorry, it’s not one of the handguns California’s “experts” approved for personal purchase.
Need an AR?
Sorry, all you can have is a bastardized amalgamation of AR parts that won’t accept mags or function like normal ARs do for normal people in normal states.
These well-paid legislative dullards are the reason why California’s anti-gun laws migrate east and become laws in other deep blue states.
Some of those laws have already been blocked by the courts (such as the default “no guns unless posted” law). Many of more of those laws are headed for the trash bin of history next spring when SCOTUS declares AR-15 bans are unconstitutional. I expect the restrictions on suppressors and Glocks will also fall within a year or two.
California gun owners still have a long path ahead to just get parity with nearby freer states. But there are more and more court case guiding the way. The big question is, “Will the ‘well-schooled goons’ described above ever be prosecuted?” That is probably the only thing that will completely stop them.
Russell Phagan has never met a shooting sport rule he didn’t want to push. From building out the Brutality match series with InRangeTV, to founding FAST (Firearms Action Shooting Trials) as its own standalone series, to his day job as Director of KE Arms, he’s spent two decades finding the edge of what a “practical” gun match can look like — and now he’s found a new one. FAST’s newest division is Auto-Rifle: full-auto and forced-reset-trigger rifles, competing on the same stages as everyone else, for the first time in a mainstream two-gun series. The division debuts at FAST-ID in Parma, Idaho, this October, presented by X-Tech Tactical, with Red Right Hand sponsoring a dedicated Auto-Rifle stage where every competitor — regardless of division — gets to run a belt-fed gun. Russell returns to break down why FAST is willing to build rules around FRTs when most series won’t.
I had not thought of bending the criteria of my vision a little by calling a forced reset trigger a machine gun. It’s tempting but I think I will keep pushing for the real thing.
As it is within a one-day drive of my underground bunker I might attend some time to observe the format and think if something like that could be used or adapted in a high school competition.
When the ATF talks about a “new era of reform,” the language sounds modest: transparency, accountability, and partnership with the firearms industry. That framing comes straight from the agency, which says it is reducing unnecessary burdens on lawful businesses and gun owners while grounding its actions in clear statutory authority. According to ATF, the goal is a system that is more collaborative and less adversarial.
But the practical effect is much bigger than the branding suggests. In April 2026, DOJ and ATF announced 34 proposed and final rulemaking actions after a broad regulatory review ordered under President Donald Trump’s February 7, 2025 executive order on Second Amendment rights. California Attorney General Rob Bonta called that package the largest such rollout the agency had ever introduced at one time.
That matters because regulatory systems are rarely dismantled in one sweep. They are usually loosened piece by piece: an approval requirement here, a notice mandate there, a narrower definition in one section, a lighter paperwork standard in another. The cumulative result can be a very different enforcement landscape even when the underlying statutes remain on the books.
We spent fifty years fighting a gun registry. They built one anyway, and they didn’t need a single new law to do it.
There are now more than 120,000 automated license plate cameras across 5,000 American communities. They photograph every single vehicle that passes. Plate, time, location, and the stickers on your truck.
So nobody has to build a list of gun owners. They just search the gun store. The range. The gun show parking lot. The road home.
A registry only ever knew that you bought a gun. This knows how often you shoot, which range you shoot at, and whose truck was parked next to yours when you there.
They also violate my Jews in the Attic Test. And if you want to get some bipartisan support mention how they can be used to catch women who travel across state lines to get abortions.
I could see suppressed launchers for green-tip 5.56 becoming popular.
Our research shows firearm owners are more likely to adopt safe and secure storage practices when they can choose from a range of devices that meet their needs, such as biometric safes for quick access or cable locks for hunting rifles.
Remember, safe storage saves lives. Every gun, every time.
It used to be John Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions was fighting for more gun bans, carry restrictions, and more oppressive red-flag laws. It makes me smile to see their front line has been pushed back to wistful thinking of mandatory safe storage.
Because the right to carry is a federally recognized right, a state government cannot force someone to give up their right to keep and bear arms just because they crossed a state line. The Constitution doesn’t know state lines, and neither do our rights. Permits available on paper, but nearly impossible to maintain in practice, do not meet the clearly articulated demands of the Second Amendment. We are optimistic the Court will agree and fully restore the Second Amendment rights of non-residents who wish to travel and spend time in Massachusetts.
With the state’s motion to dismiss rejected, the case will now proceed through the federal court system for further arguments on the merits of the licensing requirements.
SAF is initiating the next skirmish against the forces of evil. I donate to them monthly and wish them well.
This is a not-insignificant reason we have generationally lost the war on guns on America. In the anti-police peak-woke era, many criminal justice reformers turned against gun control. That hasn’t really reversed in these circles.
Gun culture has fully won.
The argument of the NRA is gun control-libs are fools, because they don’t understand there’re many legitimate reasons why Americans have a right to own guns, without restrictions.
Once you have public defenders in progressive cities making the exact same argument, we’ve lost.
Jeremy Wilcox @jwilcox79 Posted on X August 29 here and here.
I would not say we have fully won. I would say that we are on the offense on all fronts and a win is ours for the taking. There are still lots of ways to lose if we get some really bad luck or we make a major error.
My biggest concern is pushing the Overton Window too fast and the pearl-clutchers are able to gain some traction with people who have not been moving forward with our progress.
We really need to get mainstream culture to move with our Overton Window. Take a newbie to the range. Bring up your recent gun competition experiences when someone at work asks about your weekend. Maybe consider wearing NRA, SAF, CCRKBA, JPFO (bumper sticker with “All in favor of gun control raise your right hand” with an image of Hitler), GOA (includes socks!), and/or FPC (some particularly bold and entertaining stuff), branded clothing, use a branded mug, or put their bumper stickers on your vehicle.
One could argue that other countries such as in Western Europe people get along just fine without ordinary people carrying guns. You might even be able to get away with saying that. But that is only because there several million victims of the Nazis who are not available to protest to that assertion.
I always understood why the Second Amendment was constitutionally protected.
What I never really understood was why people called it a natural right.
Then I moved from New York to Florida.
I didn’t own a gun yet.
One afternoon I was loading things into the trunk of my car outside a HomeGoods when a man approached me.
“Excuse me.”
He must have thought he’d startled me, because he immediately added, “Don’t worry. I’m not going to get close.”
I laughed.
“I’m a New Yorker. I’m used to close. How can I help you?”
He started telling me that he needed money for gas.
At some point while he was talking, I got into my car.
And sitting there, with the conversation still unfolding, I suddenly realized something:
He didn’t know whether I had a gun.
Not somewhere at home.
Not hypothetically.
For all he knew, I could have had one right there in the car, tucked under the steering wheel or within reach.
I didn’t.
But he couldn’t know that.
Schrödinger’s gun.
And in that instant, before I even knew whether his story was true, something changed in the space between us.
I thought about New York.
I thought about my friend who had been murdered in his own apartment during a burglary gone wrong.
Would those men have gone into his apartment if they had believed he might be armed?
I don’t know.
I thought about the time I was mugged at gunpoint, with a gun pressed against my temple.
Would that man have approached me with the same confidence if he had believed there was even a possibility that I could defend myself?
I don’t know that either.
But sitting there in that Florida parking lot, listening to this stranger talk, I suddenly understood deterrence in a way I never had before.
Not as military theory.
Not as constitutional law.
As something intimate.
My body. My life. The few feet between one person and another.
For years I had thought about guns primarily as objects: who had one, who shouldn’t have one, what laws should govern them.
Suddenly I understood the question from the other direction.
What changes when another person cannot simply assume that I am defenseless?
I felt taller.
Not because I had a gun.
I didn’t.
But because, for the first time, I understood that someone approaching me could not automatically assume that being physically stronger meant having power over me.
There was uncertainty.
There was a boundary around my body that had to be taken seriously.
Then his story began to fall apart.
I told him I didn’t have cash, but offered to help another way. I could put some gas in his car.
He took off.
So apparently, yes, it was a scam.
But by then I had already understood something much larger than the scam.
The phrase natural right finally made sense to me.
The Constitution had not given me ownership of my body.
It had not given me my life.
It had not invented my right to protect either one.
Those things came first.
What I understood that afternoon was the thing underneath them.
I had once been completely helpless while another human being held a gun against my temple.
Years later, without a gun in my possession at all, I understood what it meant for the person approaching me not to know whether I was helpless.
That uncertainty changed the space between us.
And that was the moment I finally understood the natural right behind the Second Amendment:
My life is mine, and the right to defend it has to exist before anyone gives me permission to do so.
Cooling-off periods infringe on the Second Amendment by preventing the lawful acquisition of firearms. Cooling off periods do not fit into any historically grounded exceptions to the right to keep and bear arms, and burden conduct within the Second Amendment’s scope. In this preliminary posture, we conclude that New Mexico’s Waiting Period Act is likely an unconstitutional burden on the Second Amendment rights of its citizens. We also conclude the other preliminary injunction factors are met and that Plaintiffs are entitled to an injunction.
It is entertaining to see them squirm and indirectly admit they don’t just want “common sense gun laws”, but total bans. All the while seeing their legal framework, their life’s work in some cases, collapsing like a house of cards.
I am thinking there are probably more productive things to do. Sure, entertainment and a high moral are important. But don’t get stuck on it. Certainly, a case can be made to take people to the range and to get friendly legislators and executive branch politicians into office.
Other areas of potential value include getting good media coverage of the shooting sports. Kid’s programs, Boy/Girl Scout shooting events, local shooter participating in regional, national and international events, etc.
A federal appeals court threw out on Friday a lawsuit by California and the Giffords gun control advocacy group claiming that a Biden administration-era rule to curtail the production of illegal, largely untraceable “ghost guns” was not strict enough.
Reversing a lower court ruling, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco voted 3-0 that California and Giffords did not show the rule’s treatment of partially completed receivers, or frames, for AR-15 type semi-automatic rifles caused them harm.
Purchasing a firearm should be exactly the same as purchasing a set of kitchen cutlery. You should be able to order a full auto Ma Deuce through Amazon and have it same day shipped to your house.
A federal court in Texas has ruled that the Biden-era Frame and Receiver Rule is unconstitutional for two separate reasons: it violates the Second Amendment, and it is too vague to satisfy the Fifth Amendment’s due process protections.
The court declared the rule unconstitutional as applied to all SAF members, and issued a permanent injunction protecting Defense Distributed and current and future Second Amendment Foundation members as it relates to the specific gun kits involved in the case.
In plain English: SAF members are now expressly protected from enforcement of this rule specifically involving these specific products under the court’s order.
The government may still appeal the decision or ask the court to put the injunction on hold while an appeal moves forward. We are also seeking additional guidance from the government about exactly how the injunction will work in practice.
For now, this is another significant legal victory for SAF and its members and another example of why SAF membership matters.
It’s hard not to smile or even giggle a little bit when you see how badly President Donald Trump is scaring the country’s paid anti-gun community, especially when you combine the President’s efforts with those of the United States Supreme Court.
No one is feeling this pro-gun heat more than the youngsters working at the Trace, the propaganda arm of former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg’s gun control empire, who want the public to believe it’s an actual newsroom comprised of actual journalists—a fiction they’ll go to great lengths to maintain.
The Trace kids are extremely busy trying to stop this Second Amendment tidal wave that’s washing across the entire country. They realize that they’re losing, so they’re rabidly coming up with new ideas to counter our coming freedom—and some of their ideas are absolutely crazy.
The story’s last line is bedeviling. It’s not a quote or taken from any report. It’s completely attributable to the story’s two anti-gun authors:
“If the Supreme Court strikes down assault weapons bans nationwide next year, states could try other strategies, including putting semiautomatic rifles behind a permitting process,” they actually wrote.
Can you actually imagine that?
The highest court in the country says you can legally possess ARs in every state and U.S. Territory, but then some blue state suddenly requires you to obtain a state permit—regardless of the Supreme Court decision?
Do they think that might actually work?
It’s a Second Amendment right, right?
It would be like requiring state permits before allowing someone to read a book or scour the internet, which are rights guaranteed by the First Amendment.
The Trace is redefining desperation.
I’m picturing five-gallon pails of Zoloft, Prozac and Xanax scattered throughout their newsroom, each with a “help yourself” label.
To be fair, yes, I do believe there will be states who try to use a permitting process for firearms. Some states are and have been for many years, requiring permits to purchase handguns and many require permits to purchase any firearm. Some examples which already have permit requirements for AR-15s: Minnesota, Connecticut, Hawaii, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, and D.C. (yes, I know, not a state).
Although it is far from a sure thing it could be that SCOTUS will address the permitting issue in the “assault weapon” ban cases next year, they might. However, I suspect it will be 2028 before we get rid of the permit to purchase requirements.
Normally, we have thought outward based on the rules of reason: the law of noncontradiction, modus ponens, Occam’s razor, etc. Not so for the socialist. Based on Bloch, the socialist thinks from utopia backward. Reality is made to conform to the utopian ideal, not the ideal to reality. As the root of all things, all man needs to do is make the necessary changes to bring utopia about.
Thus, the facts of failure do not matter because, as Kolakowski explains, “‘facts’ have no ontological meaning [to the Marxists] and may be ignored without hesitation: what matters are the premonitions of the anticipating fancy.” Simply put, the socialist puts feelings over facts. If there is sufficient belief, it can be so.
While this is broader that an anti-gun quote, it is certainly congruent with what appears to be their line of thinking. And while I think it is mostly horrifying, I can see more than a little humor in it.
There is more from the article that particularly resonated with me but needs some more background:
If man is the master of both reality and his own nature, then everything is subject to the collective conscience. If enough people believe and try hard enough, the socialist paradise can be achieved. Past failures merely indicate a lack of one or both.
Back in the mid 1980s to the mid 1990s I subscribed to a magazine called, Skeptical Inquirer. For a few years I even purchased a subscription for the local King County Library in Kirkland Washington a few hundred feet from where I lived.
The hundredth monkey effect is an esoteric idea claiming that a new behavior or idea is spread rapidly by unexplained means from one group to all related groups once a critical number of members of one group exhibit the new behavior or acknowledge the new idea. The behavior was said to propagate even to groups that are physically separated and have no apparent means of communicating with each other.
That describes the socialist (and to a certain extent the anti-gun people) mindset as explained by Appelboom above.
Both involve the notion that sufficient collective belief or adoption can override ordinary constraints of evidence, transmission, or human limitation:
In the monkey story, once critical mass is reached, the idea/behavior “jumps” independently of normal learning or contact.
In the article’s diagnosis of socialist thinking, once enough people share the utopian conviction (and the will to remake human nature), reality itself is expected to conform; historical counter-evidence becomes secondary or dismissible.
In both cases the mechanism is quasi-mystical or consciousness-based rather than strictly empirical or institutional: belief/numbers generate a transformative threshold that ordinary causal processes cannot explain or resist. The article’s emphasis on “if there is sufficient belief, it can be so” and “if enough people believe and try hard enough, the socialist paradise can be achieved” maps closely onto the critical-mass logic of the hundredth-monkey claim.
Of course the domains differ (political ideology vs. a primatology anecdote turned meme), and the article is making a critical philosophical point while the monkey story was more New Age folklore. But the underlying intuition—that a tipping point of shared conviction can magically dissolve stubborn facts or barriers—is recognizably the same.
