A president’s cabinet includes the vice president and 15 federal executives, such as the attorney general, the secretary of state and the secretary of the interior. These nominees must be confirmed by a majority of U.S. senators. As each new administration comes in, there is a rush from the administration to get its cabinet confirmed so the officials can then hire their staffs and begin to fulfill the new president’s campaign promises.
Until they do so, the various agencies might still be controlled by individuals who were placed there by the previous administration. When it comes to something as basic and critical as our right to keep and bear arms, remnants of the Biden administration could still have been enforcing or propagating Biden’s anti-gun agenda—or, more likely in this case, impeding the will of the voters who cast ballots for the war on this civil right to end.
This is why President Donald Trump (R) has moved so fast to get his new administration’s team in place.
President Trump’s second cabinet has already proven to be bold, but it must always be remembered that, while cabinet appointments matter a great deal, the ultimate locus of legitimate power within the executive branch is the executive himself. Article II of the U.S. Constitution holds that “the executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.” If he wishes, the president may delegate that authority to others. But he is not obliged to do this, and, because he is the only directly elected official within the branch, it is he who is responsible for all the decisions that are made in his name.
In recent years, this idea has been slowly eroded, in favor of the false assumption that the various agencies within the executive are and should be “independent.” They are not. As with any other arm of the government, the executive branch is obliged to follow the U.S. Constitution and the laws that Congress has written, but its structure is simple: The president is in charge of his administration, and everyone else within it works directly for him.
All too often, the media indulges in the bad habit of treating cabinet officials as if each is a mini-president, with his own agenda, opinions and free-floating authority. But this is not the case. As such, we should ask two key questions for each cabinet pick. First: What does the choice tell us about what the president hopes to achieve? Second: How effective is the person likely to prove at running a department filled with bureaucrats who might try to thwart the president’s will?
President Trump’s cabinet is filled with people who respect our Second Amendment-protected freedom.
Naturally, these questions become more important to gun owners when the department they are examining is directly connected to the right to keep and bear arms. Given the size of the government, it is impossible to completely rule out interference from every wing—absurdly enough, under both former Presidents Barack Obama (D) and Joe Biden (D), the surgeon general got involved in gun-control politics—but, generally speaking, the most important areas with regard to this civil right are the Department of Justice, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF).
In 2024, Trump told the NRA that “Your Second Amendment will always be safe with me as your president.” By definition, this promise also applies to the agencies that report to him, and to everyone who works within them.
One of the most common boasts issued by President Biden was that he had issued more executive orders to effect gun control than any president in American history. Alas, this boast was true. Aware that he did not have the votes to persuade Congress to pass the policies he coveted—and cognizant of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Second Amendment rulings—Biden and his cabinet engaged in a relentless campaign to twist the plain words of a host of existing gun-control statutes in the hope they could change their meaning by fiat.
Among the many alterations that Biden sought were the expansion of “universal background checks” beyond their statutory limits; the restriction of so-called “ghost guns” (in reality, the restriction of modern production techniques as part of a cynical attempt to prevent Americans from building firearms at home); and the prohibition of braced pistols on the preposterous grounds that they turn low-powered guns into a “higher-caliber weapon” that fires a “higher-caliber bullet.”
Donald Trump, during his campaign, expressed his intention to undo these actions.
The vast majority of Biden’s overreaching actions were spearheaded at the ATF by then Director Steven Dettelbach. He resigned from the agency prior to the inauguration. As this was going to print, Trump has not named a nominee to replace Dettelbach, but this ought not to prevent the administration from moving to undo the damage that Biden inflicted.
Undoing that damage is imperative. From top to bottom, the Biden administration was staffed with figures who believed that the real villains in the United States are not actual criminals, but the law-abiding gun-owners and the private businesses that make, sell and service our firearms. In speech after speech while president, Biden insulted, threatened and mocked advocates of the right to keep and bear arms—telling them they did not “need” to own semiautomatic rifles, blaming them for the acts of the unhinged and the immoral and insisting that the U.S. government could kill them with advanced military weaponry, if it so desired. By extension, this attitude was also on display at the U.S. Department of Justice, under former Attorney General Merrick Garland, at the ATF, under Steven Dettelbach and at the FBI, under Christopher Wray.
The consequences were severe. Under Biden’s leadership, the Department of Justice set up a National Extreme Risk Protection Order (ERPO) Resource Center—the purpose of which was to cajole states into creating “red-flag” laws that deprived citizens of due process; the ATF imposed a “zero-tolerance” policy on gun dealers, which led to a record number of businesses losing their licenses—including for minor paperwork errors; and, together, the FBI and ATF got into the bad habit of performing Draconian “compliance checks” on citizens who had neither been accused of nor been convicted of any crimes. At times, the Department of Justice’s priorities were so out of whack that it defied belief, with the agency going after parents protesting school curriculum, after devout Christians and after activists who staged rallies that criticized the government—all while the crime rate increased year on year.
That leadership is now gone. Under President Trump, Merrick Garland is gone; Christopher Wray, as this was going to print, was likely to be replaced by Kash Patel, who served at the National Security Council, Department of Defense and Department of National Intelligence during President Trump’s first term (and who was instrumental in debunking the “Russiagate” hoax); and, while no permanent nominee had yet been named to lead the ATF, Steven Dettelbach had been temporarily replaced by Marvin Richardson. Reorienting these departments away from serving as inside-the-gate extensions of the gun-control movement is paramount, along with moving them back toward their stated purpose—which, as confirmed by their charters, is the enforcement of law, the protection of civil rights and the defense of the constitutional order.
In her opening statement before the Senate, the new Attorney General of the United States, Pam Bondi, committed to just that. “The Department of Justice,” she said, must return “to defending the foundational rights of all Americans, including free speech, free exercise of religion and the right to bear arms.”
During his nomination hearing, Kash Patel, was repeatedly asked questions about his stance on guns, and he repeatedly answered only that he intended to follow the Constitution as interpreted by the Supreme Court, and that he considered the role of the FBI to be “to apprehend criminals and protect our citizens.”
Peculiar as it may sound, another important challenge President Trump will face is to ensure that other, ostensibly unrelated, federal departments do not range into areas that are none of their business. Under President Bill Clinton, some of the most egregious attempts at strict gun-control—including a “buyback program” that used taxpayers’ money to bribe the citizenry into disarmament, and a series of lawsuits that were designed to bankrupt gun manufacturers—came from, of all places, the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
Under President Obama, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) developed gun-control programs under the false auspices of “public health.” Under President Biden, HHS used public funds to create anti-gun programs for “local communities.” Under Obama, the Social Security Administration issued rules that took away the Second Amendment rights of recipients who were unable to manage their financial affairs. Under both Biden and Obama, the surgeon general, Vivek Murthy, announced plans to take the right to keep and bear arms “out of the realm of politics and put it into the realm of public health.”
There is not a single good reason for any of these agencies to interfere with the Second Amendment. Nothing that these departments produce should touch on firearms—even tangentially; however minor, they ought to issue no “guidance,” no “studies” and no “community engagement” that restricts or disparages the right to bear arms.
In this regard, the Biden presidency presented two significant problems for the Second Amendment: A president who had terrible ideas about the right to keep and bear arms, and a federal bureaucracy that had become unmoored from the restrictions of the U.S. Constitution.
Trump, meanwhile, has filled his cabinet with other pro-freedom individuals who are likely to, in the few ways they touch it, enhance our Second Amendment rights. One is Doug Burgum, former governor of North Dakota. He grew up hunting, which is one use of this right. He is now the secretary of the interior. In this role, he is situated to support hunting and shooting ranges on public lands.
Another pro-Second Amendment official in his cabinet is Kristi Noem, former governor of South Dakota. Noem is now the U.S. secretary of homeland security. One of her tasks is directing government power to go after actual criminals, not law-abiding gun owners. Her first moves in office show she clearly understands this.
Another example is Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. He is a gun owner who has been interviewed for this magazine. He argued in these pages that the “U.S. Armed Forces have long been very risk averse and bureaucratic, but they should not control, or distrust, the volunteers serving us so much that they strip away their Second Amendment rights.”
A foreigner or an apolitical person—or, for that matter, anyone with common sense—might read this and wonder why it must be pointed out that law-enforcement agencies should go after actual criminals, not those who are simply exercising a constitutionally protected right. But the Biden administration did weaponize federal agencies against law-abiding gun owners. They did this even as violent crime rates rose.
All the rhetoric and evidence shows that this new Trump administration is, in contrast, bringing the federal government back into alignment with our Constitution and the nature of our freedom.
