Whose side is the president on? Sometimes it’s hard to tell.
From wiping out the transfer tax on NFA items to offering up firearm rights for felons, Donald Trump may seem like the most Second Amendment-friendly president in years. But then he turns right around and seemingly undermines those very efforts. It’s enough to make gun owners in America ask whose side he’s really on – and the answer is, frankly, unclear.
One Big Beautiful Lawsuit
Remember the One Big Beautiful Bill Act? President Trump fought for this legislation from day one of his second term, finally signing it into law on July 4, 2025. As Liberty Nation News reported at the time, it included a boon for gun owners that, while historic in itself, could have been – and almost was – so much more.
The National Firearms Act of 1934 established a $200 tax on any transfer of short-barreled rifles (SBRs) and shotguns (SBSs), silencers, or any firearm that didn’t quite fit the other categories. And for more than 90 years, that tax was used as a way to justify requiring Americans who wanted such an item to pay the fee and apply for ownership, wait for approval – a process that until recently regularly took anywhere from ten months to a couple of years – and then, if approved, be placed on a federal registry for NFA gun owners called the National Firearms Registration and Transfer Record.
The Big Beautiful Bill that President Trump signed on Independence Day removed the $200 transfer tax from those items (though left it for machine guns), but its original form would have removed them entirely from the law. That version passed the House but simply couldn’t clear the Senate. And that’s where Gun Owners of America (GOA) stepped in. That very day, GOA, along with several other Second Amendment advocacy groups and firearms sellers, filed what they called “the Big Beautiful Lawsuit.” Their argument was simple: Since the tax on SBSs, SBRs, silencers, and “Any Other Weapon” (AOWs) no longer exists, neither does Congress’ constitutional authority to regulate them at all. In short, they sought to achieve in court what Republicans could not in Congress.
The Trump administration had until November 20 to respond, but the response that came was not what American gun owners hoped to see from their Second Amendment champion in the White House.
The Department of Justice’s rebuttal was that, since manufacturers and importers still had to pay the Special Occupation Tax, the rest of it – the application process, the federal registry, etc. – were all still constitutional. Furthermore, the administration argued that the kind of challenge made in the One Big Beautiful Lawsuit “threaten[s] to short circuit the democratic process by preventing duly enacted laws from being implemented in constitutional ways.”
It was a stance that took GAO by surprise – and understandably so.
Second Amendment for All? Not Quite
But that isn’t the only example of the Trump administration’s confusing and seemingly conflicted stance on the Second Amendment. Just two weeks after the signing of the OBBB, the Justice Department issued a press release explaining a new rule proposed – by the administration – to allow the attorney general’s office to grant relief to felons from the prohibition on possessing firearms.
Making a way to restore the right to keep and bear arms to a whole class of citizens deemed unworthy of adequate self-defense by the Gun Control Act of 1968 was yet another historic act by the Trump administration. Presently, it is a separate felony act for a convicted felon to possess a firearm – not to use it wrongfully, but simply to be in possession of it, an act considered a fundamental human right for most anyone else. While the new application for relief doesn’t wipe that infringement on the Second Amendment away entirely, it does mean individual felons can request to have the government stop suppressing their rights – and, presumably, to have that request granted.
But felons aren’t the only group of people deemed less than human by the law. The very same act prohibited gun possession by users of illegal drugs. Again, this isn’t about the wrongful use of a firearm but the mere possession of it. Drug users don’t have to be high while using or even carrying a gun to find themselves locked up on felony charges – which, at the federal level, carries a potential 15-year sentence – they simply have to own a gun and be a known user in general. According to surveys examined by Reason, somewhere around 20 million Americans are violating this law today – and most of them are users of marijuana, a drug that has been made at least partially legal for either recreational or medicinal use in a handful of states.
But the Trump administration wants the Supreme Court to overturn a 2024 decision by the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit stating there’s “no historical justification for disarming a sober citizen not presently under an impairing influence.” Rather, the president supports a felony-level ban on drug users obtaining firearms at all.
Just what does the Second Amendment mean to the president, and to whom does it apply? Might as well just shake up the magic 8 ball and ask it: Reply hazy, try again.
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