BCA

The Second Amendment Outlook For 2025

In 2025 - build more guns!

If 2023 was a rollercoaster ride for us Second Amendment Radicals, 2024 was the Veloci-coaster version. Hotly-contested elections nationwide, two documented assassination attempts on Donald Trump, an ensuing Trump victory, a general push towards the “red” in American politics, and two major blows to the bureaucracy (Chevron is gone, Cargill won and bump stocks are a thing again - except in Florida, waaa…) via the Supreme Court, and general economic craziness made for an insane year for the Second Amendment community. We didn’t know whether to keep buying ammo in bulk or let things percolate a little. Plus as 2024 skidded to a close, the utterly loathed ATF Director Steve Dettelbach resigned. Hallelujah!

To be fair, here at RGG HQ, the general feeling was that the Harris/Walz ticket was going to clinch the victory by any means necessary. Election Night played out as it had in 2020, and 2022, but took a big 180 from those trends before sunrise this time, and unbelievably, Donald Trump pulled off a Grover Cleveland and was declared the winner of the 2024 Presidential election in the early morning hours of November 6th. The GOP managed to hold on to the House and eke out a slim majority in the Senate, as well.

But what does this reversal of predictions mean for the Second Amendment Radical and armed citizen community?

Note: Some of these predictions are assuming that Donald Trump will likely be inaugurated without much in the way of disruption on January 20th, 2025. If he isn’t, literally every bet is off. While it is likely Trump will be seated as President, no one thought Joe Biden would drop out of the race with Harris getting the default nod from the DNC. Let’s see what happens.

But anyways…

President Donald J Trump and the Second Amendment

It’s been theorized and stated that Donald Trump has revised his views on the Second Amendment and the right to keep and bear arms. From courting the Gun Owners of America, taking the repeal of his bump stock ban in stride, and not stating a desire to pass new gun control laws despite getting shot, it’s entirely possible that Trump may have come around somewhat on the topic of our inherent right.

Worth noting of course is that Trump was a New York City Democrat originally, and generally leaned progressive in his younger years. It was only in 2012, when he explored running for political office originally, did his party allegiances shift towards the GOP.

In his first term, Trump did state a support for red flag laws and “increased” background checks. And yes, he famously enacted the now-repealed bump stock ban executive order.

Which does bring us to a campaign promise he made. Trump stated during his campaign that he would undo all of Joe Biden’s executive orders related to the Second Amendment. The weak point of executive orders is just that. What one executive can enact, another can repeal. The people at Open Source Defense suggest he take it one step further and knock down a few decades worth of anti-2A executive orders while he’s at it. Trump could literally eke out a huge victory for Second Amendment Radicals in the space of an hour.

Will he at least undo Biden’s executive orders? That remains to be seen. It’s likely he will, considering the ease of which it could be done. It may not be a Day 1 item, but it’s likely a “2Q 2025” item, i.e. if it happens, it’ll be after March when he gets settled and moving again.

Trump also spoke of supporting a national concealed carry permit reciprocity scheme. Since this requires legislation, the chances of that happening quickly are almost none. The margins in Congress are too thin still to permit any massive changes by law in support of the Second Amendment.

Trump may get a Supreme Court pick in 2025, but it’s likely to be a replacement of an existing conservative Justice and not one of the liberal ones like Sotomayor falling out.

Like most politicians, Trump has a broad agenda and cannot exclusively focus on the Second Amendment. Regardless, he has two years to make at least one solid gain on the subject. While the executive order repeal is an easy thing to do, a win is a win. However, it would be really nice to see at least one solid bit of pro-2A legislation locked in before the midterms in 2026. Why before then? Simple, the ruling party often loses seats and a majority in one chamber of Congress before midterms. Trump has until January of 2027 to make it happen.

In the grand scheme of the Second Amendment, President Trump is the lesser of two evils. He’s not a full-blown fan of it, but Harris was violently opposed to the idea of the right to keep and bear arms. In terms of “suitability” for the post from a Second Amendment perspective, Trump is a 6 and Harris is a 1. Not great, not terrible, in terms of Trump.

If anything, Trump is unpredictable even on a good day. Mix in his bromance with Elon, whose own opinions on 2A have been vague, and 2025 is going to be interesting just based on these two alone.

Watch this space as things progress.

The Legislative And Judicial Landscape

Let’s be blunt, the past four years were definitely not fun on the federal level. Biden’s executive orders, the booby trap-laden BPSCA laws, aka the Uvalde bill, and other nonsense gave us Second Amendment Radicals a helluva time. Despite all that, at the state level we did make some gains, with the majority of the nation (state-wise) embracing some form of permitless carry, and even some blue states grudgingly conceding ground with regards to Bruen.

Of course the biggest judicial victories were Garland v Cargill, aka the bump stock ban repeal, and Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo + Relentless, Inc. v. Department of Commerce (referred to collectively as the Fisheries Cases), aka the repeal of Chevron deference. Technically both cases were not Second Amendment cases, but were in regards to executive overreach. In Cargill, the Supreme Court ruled that government agencies basically could not rewrite law with executive actions. The Justices saw that stacks of paperwork couldn’t magically turn a piece of plastic into a machine gun. In the Fisheries Cases, the Courts correctly ruled that automatically deferring to the government agencies was not proper procedure, and that courts in general must fully exercise their duty to interpret the law, and not take shortcuts courtesy of government “experts”.

What this means for us in the Second Amendment community collectively is that the government itself has lost a key weapon in their judicial arsenal. No longer can they legally “write something out” that they don’t like. No longer can courts just “trust the experts” and rule in their favor. If the government wishes to ban something, they now need to have legislation drafted and that legislation has to make it to the President’s desk for ratification. This subjects the proposed law to the grueling process of Congress, which buys us time and presents opportunities to combat it, instead of falling back on the courts, as has been the case for decades. The Fisheries ruling ensures that if the law is contested in the courts, the court can’t just ask the government what it thinks, and rule based on just that.

This bodes well for some pending cases for 2025. Most notably:

Vanderstok v Garland

This case has already been heard by the Supreme Court and a decision is expected shortly. Basically, one of Biden’s executive orders, the “ghost gun” rule, demanded the ATF redefine just what constitutes a “firearm” to place even more items under the scope of the Gun Control Act and Brady Bunch idiocy. Which means basically those items become “firearms” and thus subject to things like a background check as a condition of retail purchase. What this order did immediately was make 80 percent kits “firearms” in that now one must purchase components separately, lest the ATF think you are getting a gun shipped directly to your home. The idiocy in this policy is that almost no one ordered these kits with nefarious intent. They just wanted to make a gun at home, much like their ancestors did for centuries prior. There’s no historical tradition of regulating chunks of metal, after all. Conservatively, this case has a 70 percent chance of ruling in our favor in 2025.

Mock v Garland

Gee, Garland seems to get a lot of heat thrown his way. Wonder why? Anyways, this one regards another one of Biden’s brain droppings, this time he got all aflutter about pistol braces. Sure, some people used braced pistols in a bad way, but some people use broomsticks in a bad way. There’s no executive orders concerning broomsticks for some reason, though. The original fallout of this rule was that the ATF required pretty much every braced pistol to be registered (for free, gee thanks…) as an SBR during a 120 day window back in 2023. Compliance was low, with some estimates having the number well below 5 percent. Even liberal estimates only estimated a 10 percent compliance rate. Regardless, plaintiffs William Mock, Christopher Lewis, Maxim Defense Industries, LLC, and Firearms Policy Coalition pushed forward the case, eventually getting it under quite a few preliminary injunctions, which were granted based on the likelihood of success of the plaintiffs, i.e. the judges figured this was all a waste of time and granted the injunction accordingly. We’re at the point now where retailers are selling braces and braced pistols again, with no warning about a potential NFA violation. The brace rule will either likely die in the court system in 2025, or be repealed by President Trump. It’s a rule destined for failure regardless, and the President could score some easy political capital with the Second Amendment community by simply repealing Biden’s rule. Remember, a sitting President can cancel any executive order he wants. If Mock has to go to the Supreme Court, the case would have a 90 percent likelihood of being ruled in our favor.

Snope v Brown

Snope is one of many cases concerning “assault weapons” that are winding their way through the courts. As most of you all may be aware, in the thankful absence of a current federal assault weapons ban, many states have thumbed their noses at the Constitution and passed their own. The Supreme Court has refused to hear any challenges to those laws, with no reason given for not granting cert. Snope happens to be one of the cases that has made it’s way almost to the point of being granted cert post-Bruen. For reasons unknown, it was denied cert back in May of 2024, but has been scheduled for conference at some point in the near future, which as of December 30th, 2024 means sometime in 2025. SCOTUS doesn’t work on New Year’s Eve usually. Anyways, the general scuttlebutt seems to be that the Court is waiting for some other AWB-related cases to make it to them, in order to deliver a consolidated blow to the concept of an assault weapons ban. As all current AWBs only address cosmetic features of guns and nothing meaningful about the guns, the laws are automatically repugnant to Bruen as there were absolutely zero laws concerning the appearance and accessorizing of firearms in the history of this nation until recently. No one cared if your musket had a pistol grip, certainly not enough to make a law about it. As far as how the Court could rule, that’s a tricky one. The Supreme Court is ultimately a political animal, despite claims to the contrary. Justices are classified as “conservative” or “liberal” after all. The case itself is likely to require Chief Justice Roberts, who seems to switch sides every week, to be a tie-breaker. If he feels he has to placate the Trump wing of the GOP, he’s likely to side with the Second Amendment. Right now, if Snope is granted cert, it’s got about a 60 percent chance of being ruled in our favor. More clarity will come after Inauguration Day.

Those are the big cases on tap. Of course there’s numerous other cases in federal and state courts, usually concerning age restrictions on firearms purchases, rollbacks of arcane laws and rules, and other important but dense minutiae.

On the state level, expect another state or two to flip towards Constitutional Carry. Potentially North Carolina, for one. Also expect legal challenges to Florida’s various nonsensical post-Parkland laws like the state-level bump stock ban.

Violence Isn’t Going Away Because Trump Won The Election

A fair amount of conservatives like to think that the spike in violent crime will subside noticeably just because Trump got elected. To be fair, that won’t be the case. Sure, law enforcement will feel a little more confident to do their job since they have a friendly face in the White House, but where the rubber meets the road, it’s still going to be a little tense out there, mainly in urban areas, and especially in “blue” urban areas where there’s legal and cultural prohibitions on armed self-defense. New York City comes to mind. Since the Daniel Penny case was decided in his favor, several notable attacks have occurred in New York City, usually along the lines of burnings, attempted decapitations, and outright homicidal attacks. And no one intervened, fearful that they themselves may be the next Daniel Penny. This of course may spur some action in the opposite direction, with people choosing to arm themselves for defense despite the law.

However, even if you live in a peaceful suburb or rural area, it pays to keep yourself squared away and armed as often as possible. Years of upward trends cannot be reversed overnight. 2025 may be peaceful, or it may not be. Macro trends certainly do not reverse overnight, either.

2025 Will Be Interesting

Truth be told, 2025 is shaping up to be a good year for Second Amendment Radicals. Trump isn’t an ideal President for the Second Amendment, but he beats the decidedly drunk and unpleasant alternative. He’s malleable and if he sees 2A victories popping up, he’s liable to become more of an ally, mainly for his own purposes - but the Second Amendment community should take his alliance, with some reservations.

Regardless, stay positive, keep training, keep spreading the good words about Second Amendment Radicalism, and keep your powder dry. Anything can happen.

A big thanks and best wishes for an auspicious 2025 to:

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