The Biden administration’s use of government agencies against law-abiding gun owners, dealers and manufacturers helped propel the phrase “weaponization of government” into popular usage.
Still, this is hardly a new concept. In Operation Fast and Furious, the Obama administration used the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) to run guns into Mexico—likely to create an excuse to pass more gun control at home—and, with Operation Choke Point, the Obama administration used the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) to force the financial-services industry to end business relationships with “politically incorrect” companies, such as those in the gun industry.
In 1975, shortly after the Watergate scandal, the U.S. Senate established a special panel to investigate crimes that U.S. intelligence agencies had committed against American citizens. This was known as the Church Committee.
In early 2023, the U.S. House of Representatives pointed back to the Church Committee when they voted to establish a Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, which has been chaired by Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio).
In an interview in this magazine in September 2023, we asked Jordan: “With the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government you chair, are you looking into how the Biden administration is targeting gun and ammo makers and dealers?”
“We sure are, particularly this rule by the ATF,” said Jordan. “When it comes to pistol braces, it is as wrong as it gets. They told Americans for years that these simple additions to firearms were legal and fine. Then they just decided to change the rules without taking the rule change through Congress … . So, we are looking at that ATF power grab and other issues. This attitude that the Left has toward American freedom, particularly the citizenry’s Second Amendment rights, is appalling.”
In a series of public hearings, this subcommittee was able to bring attention to this issue and to expose and pressure the Biden administration to at least slow down its agencies’ attempts to abuse their power with zero-tolerance policies on gun stores, with new and made-up rules for gun owners and more.
Now a second Trump administration has begun and, on his first day in office, President Donald Trump (R) signed an executive order to stop the weaponization of government.
The Trump De-Weaponization
Trump’s executive order begins by declaring, “The American people have witnessed the previous administration engage in a systematic campaign against its perceived political opponents, weaponizing the legal force of numerous Federal law enforcement agencies and the Intelligence Community against those perceived political opponents in the form of investigations, prosecutions, civil enforcement actions, and other related actions ... . Therefore, this order sets forth a process to ensure accountability for the previous administration’s weaponization of the Federal Government against the American people.”
The executive order next directs the attorney general to investigate all of the actions taken by “agencies exercising civil or criminal enforcement authority of the United States, including, but not limited to, the Department of Justice” to identify any instances of the weaponization of government. The attorney general, as well as the director of national intelligence, will have to create reports on everything they find so that actions can be taken to prevent this weaponization from taking place in the future.
Such reports, and the remedies they are tasked with presenting, will shake, rattle and perhaps crack open the Washington, D.C., bureaucracy. Sunlight will then have the opportunity to disinfect these agencies.
This will not be a small endeavor.
The Biden Administration’s Weaponization
Biden weaponized government agencies in order to curtail Second Amendment-protected rights throughout his presidency.
The ATF is a law-enforcement agency responsible for enforcing various federal gun laws. Under Biden, Attorney General Merrick Garland and ATF Director Steven Dettelbach transformed the agency into one creating laws rather than one merely enforcing them.
Creating law is a power the U.S. Constitution delegates to Congress, not federal agencies; however, this did not stop the ATF under Biden from proposing several “Final Rules” designed to significantly encroach upon Americans’ rights.
The ATF began its assault by targeting pistol braces with a Final Rule that classified virtually all pistols equipped with stabilizing braces as “short-barreled rifles” (SBRs). This classification places them under the authority of the National Firearms Act, subjecting them to the same regulations as machine guns. Subsequent lawsuits have led to a mixed outcome regarding that Final Rule.
The ATF also redefined what constitutes a firearm under a Final Rule commonly referred to as the “Frame or Receiver” rule. The ATF’s Final Rule, targeting privately made firearms—sometimes labeled “ghost guns” by anti-gunners—broadened the definition of “frame or receiver” to encompass “a partially complete, disassembled, or nonfunctional frame or receiver” and expanded the definition of “firearm” to include a “weapon parts kit.” Another issue was the “engaged in the business” rule, in which the ATF exceeded its statutory authority to create “presumptions” about when an individual must obtain a federal firearm license (FFL). These presumptions cover common, lawful activities, such as renting a table at a gun show. This was yet another attempt to coerce internet service providers, gun shows, technology platforms and others into distancing themselves from private firearms sales or risk running afoul of the ATF.
Also, from his first day in office, Biden repeatedly stated that violent crime—what he called “gun violence”—was the direct result of “rogue” gun dealers putting guns into the hands of criminals, allegedly through illegal sales at their retail outlets. In 2021, Biden announced a new “zero-tolerance policy for rogue gun dealers that willfully violate the law.” The policy further specified that “absent extraordinary circumstances that would need to be justified to the director, ATF will seek to revoke the licenses of dealers the first time that they violate federal law ... .”
The “zero-tolerance” policy was designed to reduce the number of federally licensed dealers, which would, in turn, make it harder for law-abiding Americans to exercise their Second Amendment rights. The result was widespread ATF persecution of dealers for minor paperwork mistakes, causing many to lose their licenses or give them up under the threat of ATF prosecution.
Biden also created the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention, as this was a way for his administration to cajole anti-gun donors and to seek further ways to infringe upon citizens’ Second Amendment rights. In late 2023, the office hosted nearly 100 Democrat lawmakers from 39 states to encourage them to pass more-restrictive firearms laws at the state level.
Biden even attempted to weaponize the medical community against gun owners via Surgeon General Vivek Murthy. In June 2024, Murthy issued an advisory declaring “gun violence” to be a “public-health crisis” and recommended it be treated as such.
So, What’s to Come?
Before Inauguration Day last January, many mainstream-news publications, as well as Democratic Party leadership, still wouldn’t acknowledge that the Biden administration had weaponized the government against certain groups and individuals for political purposes. In fact, they began promoting a narrative that President Trump would weaponize the government against them.
For example, a hyperbolic opinion piece published in The Globalist featured the headline: “Trump Means to Weaponize the Justice Department.”
Instead, Trump has done the exact opposite. On Inauguration Day, he signed several executive orders, including the action titled “Ending the Weaponization of the Federal Government.”
President Trump hadn’t even taken office when Biden’s ATF director announced his resignation effective just two days before Inauguration Day. Former ATF Director Dettelbach played a key role in many of the ATF’s efforts to create law rather than enforce it, from the braced pistol rule to the “frame or receiver” rule to the regulation redefining who is “engaged in the business” of selling guns. Dettelbach would likely have been quickly fired, but in any case, his departure was a big step toward de-weaponizing the ATF.
The replacement of Attorney General Merrick Garland with Pam Bondi is equally significant because Biden’s weaponization of the Department of Justice, which oversees the ATF, has also influenced other agencies, including the FBI and the CIA. Garland was complicit in Biden’s plan to attribute violent crime to lawful gun owners.
President Trump’s swift transformation of the FBI marks another significant victory for the de-weaponization of the government.
Another example of President Trump rolling back Biden’s weaponization of government occurred on Trump’s second day in office, when, without fanfare, the Trump administration removed the link to the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention from the White House website. The result: No more wasting gun owners’ tax dollars to design new schemes to throttle those same gun owners’ right to keep and bear arms.
President Trump and his administration have also reversed course on Biden’s treatment of violent criminals. For the past four years, America’s law-abiding gun owners have been compelled to watch as guns and the right to possess them were blamed for America’s violent crime. President Trump, however, swiftly showed he knows criminals are the source of violent crime.
For example, the Biden administration’s open-border policy inarguably impacted violent-crime rates. President Trump swept into office with a focus on targeting criminals rather than lawful gun owners. Instead of signing an executive order that would make it more difficult for Americans to purchase guns, Trump opted to tighten the southern border. Since then, his administration has started deporting numerous violent offenders.
On Jan. 27, for example, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents arrested 956 illegal immigrants across the nation. This followed 286 arrests the previous day, 593 arrests the day before that, and another 538 arrests the day prior. On the day with 538 arrests, 373 individuals were confirmed to have criminal records, which included a suspected terrorist, four members of the Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gang and several individuals convicted of sex crimes against minors.
The next day, on Jan. 28, approximately 25 members of the Tren de Aragua gang were arrested by ICE, according to a senior administration official. In total, there were 969 arrests made that day, including a convicted member of MS-13 who was apprehended by ICE in Dallas.
On Jan. 29, the first multi-agency operation in New York City resulted in multiple arrests, including that of a suspected leader of Tren de Aragua and others facing charges of kidnapping, assault and burglary. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem accompanied officers during the early-morning raid.
Additionally, a day of raids in Boston resulted in the capture of several illegal immigrants with violent criminal backgrounds, including MS-13 gang members, suspected rapists and murderers, according to an ICE press release.
The Trump administration’s efforts to capture and deport violent criminals have thus far shown some success. Early reports also indicate that the number of people attempting to illegally cross the southern border were decreasing.
On Jan. 29, U.S. Border Patrol Chief Mike Banks posted on X: “In the past seven days, U.S. Border Patrol agents apprehended 4,577 individuals attempting to enter the country illegally, a significant 55% decrease from the previous week’s 10,281 apprehensions. This trend indicates that our enhanced border security measures produce results …”
Instead of pretending that the rights of law-abiding American citizens are responsible for violent-crime rates, as the Biden administration did, the Trump administration is targeting actual wrongdoers to ensure our safety.
Ultimately, President Trump still has a long way to go to address much of the mess left by Biden’s weaponization of the federal government against lawful gun owners, manufacturers and sellers, but he is off to a strong start.
