The Trump Administration Has a Conflicted Relationship with the Second Amendment

The right to bear arms is inherently anti-authoritarian at a time when Trump wields authority.

The Trump administration has a problem when it comes to the Second Amendment. A large part of its base consists of people who firmly believe in the right to keep and bear arms. But that right, as protected by the Second Amendment, empowers the individual and stands as a challenge to the authority of the state.

This creates an awkward situation for a president and his coterie who don't like being challenged or even criticized. That's why we see administration officials arguing in favor of self-defense rights one moment while challenging the right to keep and bear arms at another.

Mixed Messages on Gun Rights

In December, the Trump administration sued Washington, D.C. over the city's draconian gun laws. The nation's capital bans the ownership of many semiautomatic firearms, including the widely owned AR-15 (tens of millions are in private hands nationwide).

"Today's action from the Department of Justice's new Second Amendment Section underscores our ironclad commitment to protecting the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding Americans," commented U.S. Attorney General Pamela Bondi. "Washington, DC's ban on some of America's most popular firearms is an unconstitutional infringement on the Second Amendment—living in our nation's capital should not preclude law-abiding citizens from exercising their fundamental constitutional right to keep and bear arms."

That's what you want to hear from government officials—full-throated defense of individual rights, and legal action against jurisdictions that violate liberty. But just weeks later, the Trump-appointed U.S. attorney for Washington, D.C. was singing a very different tune.

"You bring a gun into the district, you mark my words, you're going to jail," U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro told Fox News on February 2. "I don't care if you have a license in another district, and I don't care if you're a law-abiding gun owner somewhere else. You bring a gun into this district, count on going to jail, and hope you get the gun back."

The next day, Pirro doubled down on X, commenting in a video post: "Every responsible gun owner that I know makes sure that they understand the laws where they are going and understand whatever registration requirements there might be….You're responsible, you follow the laws, you're not going to have a problem with me."

But the point many gun owners correctly make is that rights supersede the law. The law should be obeyed only if it's respectful of natural rights. With its lawsuit against D.C. over the semiautomatic ban, the Trump administration already recognized that at least some of the capital's gun laws violate self-defense rights. So, why was one of its officials now threatening jail time for breaking those laws?

A Brewing Feud With Gun Owners

In fact, the Trump administration was already in trouble with gun owners after the shooting by Border Patrol agents of Minneapolis protester Alex Pretti, who was legally carrying a concealed firearm at the time of his death. Federal officials attacked Pretti as well as the right to bear arms.

"You cannot bring a firearm, loaded, with multiple magazines to any sort of protest that you want. It's that simple. You don't have a right to break the law and incite violence," FBI Director Kash Patel wrongly insisted.

"I don't like it when somebody goes into a protest and he's got a very powerful, fully loaded gun with two magazines loaded up with bullets also," complained Trump.

To Pirro and the administration, the National Association for Gun Rights snapped back, "Bureaucrats act like the 2A does not exist and brag about jailing people for exercising their rights."

"Recent events in Minnesota underscore a recurring and deeply troubling theme: Government officials and commentators treating natural rights as privileges," added the Firearms Policy Coalition (FPC). "As the Declaration of Independence puts it, 'all men are created equal… endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.' We believe those rights include the rights to self-defense, freedom of speech, and to protest the government."

The FPC statement emphasizing "the rights to self-defense, freedom of speech, and to protest the government" underscored the administration's conflicted relationship with guns and the Second Amendment. In a country founded on armed revolution, the right to keep and bear arms is inextricably linked with resistance to authority. So, for that matter, is the right to free speech, which—in the form of pamphlets, articles, and public addresses—put fire in the bellies of the original revolutionaries.

Anti-Authoritarian Rights Meet an Authoritarian Administration

But the authority the current crop of protesters demonstrate against is wielded by the Trump administration. And the officials whom they might resist hold office courtesy of the current president. That spirit of criticism and rebellion doesn't sit well with a man who has asserted, "I have the right to do whatever I want as President." More recently, Trump claimed in the context of global relations that he was constrained only by "my own morality. My own mind. It's the only thing that can stop me."

That president has surrounded himself with hangers-on who flatter the boss or otherwise elevate deference to law and the powers-that-be over considerations of natural rights and of simple popular disagreement with the administration's policies. There's not much of an anti-authoritarian streak running through this (or, to be fair, any) White House.

People protesting in the streets and exercising their right to bear arms are challenging officials who believe they can do whatever they want. The guns they own and carry are an implied threat that far more potential constraint exists in the hands of the public than will ever be supplied by one politician's personal morality.

In political terms, the Trump administration must keep its base happy by, in part, supporting the individual right to keep and bear arms and working to overturn restrictions on the same. There are, certainly, some officials sincerely working towards that end.

But the right to keep and bear arms, like the right to freedom of speech, makes individuals more powerful relative to the state. It's inherently anti-authoritarian. The Trump administration, under a president who bridles at any hint of restraint on his power, is authoritarian to its core. This administration sends mixed messages about the Second Amendment because it's deeply uncomfortable with the challenge to government posed by individuals exercising their natural right to keep and bear arms.