A small gun rights group wants Donald Trump to “make the second amendment great again” by appointing a special Department of Justice prosecutor to go after cities and states that violate gun owners’ rights.
Trump’s pick for attorney general is Jeff Sessions, a Republican senator from Alabama with an A rating from the National Rifle Association who has taken hard line positions on immigration reform, drug laws, and reforming the criminal justice system.
Many advocates believe the justice department’s investigations of civil rights violations by local police departments will virtually end under a Trump administration. But a not-for-profit organization based in Washington state that funds gun rights litigation hopes that Trump’s justice department will put its focus on a different civil rights issue: state laws which it believes violate gun owners’ rights.
The Second Amendment Foundation suggested last week that Trump’s attorney general should appoint a “special assistant” in charge of defending gun rights.
“I’m definitely optimistic that Senator Sessions as attorney general would be amenable to the idea,” Alan Gottlieb, the group’s founder, said.
He said the group has discussed the proposal with members of Trump’s transition team, though not directly with Sessions or Trump himself. A Trump campaign spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.
Among the first potential targets of a special assistant attorney general for gun rights, the group suggested, would be strict gun permitting laws in New York, California, New Jersey, Maryland, and Washington DC that require citizens to show a specific need for a gun before being granted a license to carry a firearm in public.
The National Rifle Association, one of Trump’s most loyal conservative allies, has already suggested a different approach to addressing strict gun control laws in more liberal states. The NRA has called for Congress to pass a federal concealed carry reciprocity law that could dramatically undermine local gun restrictions in states such as New York and California – allowing, for instance, tourists from other states to bring their guns with them to New York City.
A spokesman for the National Rifle Association did not respond to a request for comment on whether having a special assistant for gun rights within the justice department would be useful or appropriate.
Everytown for Gun Safety, a leading gun control group founded by former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg, declined to comment on the Second Amendment Foundation’s proposal. Last week, Shannon Watts, the founder of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, a group that is part of Everytown, said advocates would continue to fight to protect local gun laws – and against national reciprocity legislation.
Advocacy groups focused on preventing the country’s more than 11,000 gun murders and 21,000 gun suicides a year view strict gun control laws like those in New York and California as the gold standard in gun violence prevention.
New York’s strict gun laws are “a chief reason New York has one of the nation’s lowest gun fatality rates” and the prospect of losing them is “needless, heartless, pointless”, the New York Daily News, a left-leaning tabloid, wrote in an editorial on Monday about the NRA’s plans for concealed carry reciprocity. “Blood would spill.”
But for some gun rights advocates, laws like those in New York City are a civil rights violation.
“Look, the justice department is always out there, on the prowl for other people’s rights being violated. It’s time that you take a look and see how state and local governments have eroded the second amendment, and maybe do something about this,” said Dave Workman, the senior editor at the Gun Mag, a publication produced by the Second Amendment Foundation.
A justice department gun rights point person would also “make sure the DOJ does not take anti-second amendment positions on any legal action”, Gottlieb said in a statement last week. “This individual would also serve as a liaison with gun rights organizations, working with them rather than against them to assure that the nation’s laws are used to prosecute criminals rather than persecute law-abiding gun owners.”