Author: Kim du Toit

Here’s something I can only describe as a wake-up call:

Rep. Andrew Clyde (R) is leading a coalition of GOP House members urging President Donald Trump to pick an Attorney-General who will “immediately” wipe away Biden-era ATF gun controls.  Clyde and 32 other House members signed an April 21, 2026, letter, asking Trump to choose and A-G who will “immediately cease enforcement of Biden-era gun rules and secure permanent – not temporary – relief.”

Yes, yes, and again yes.

I’m getting heartily sick of a Department of [alleged] Justice which pays lip service to the Constitution — and especially to the Second Amendment — but either fails to redress wrongs through inaction or by continuing to slavishly enforce older regulations which tramp all over the Founding Document.

Clyde and his colleagues also ask Trump to choose an A-G who will reform and clean house at the ATF. They view this task as including:

• • Purging the ATF of gun-grabbing bureaucrats;
  • Opposing any effort to create, operate, or maintain a federal firearms registry in any form;
  • Stopping the ATF’s release of sensitive firearm trace data in violation of the Tiahrt Amendment*;
  • Shutting down and deleting the ATF’s illegal, searchable gun registry known as the Out-of-Business Records Imaging System (OBRIS); and
  • Reducing NFA application processing times.

That “purging the ATF of gun-grabbing bureaucrats” should only be a precursor to moving the A and T part back to the Treasury (where it belongs), and a complete deletion of the F, because fuck them.

Clyde and his colleagues pointed to the support Trump received from gun owners during the November 2024 elections, suggesting he should now support them as they supported him: “Mr. President, American gun owners have been some of your most loyal and enthusiastic voters. They delivered for you at the ballot box, and they deserve to see their constitutional rights respected in return.

“The roadmap above requires no new legislation – it only requires leadership, will-power, and a Department of Justice that is genuinely committed to your agenda rather than protecting its own institutional inaction.”

Clearly, ex-AG Blondie wasn’t up to the job.  If I were Trump, I’d make Alan Gottlieb (of the Second Amendment Foundation) the AG, let him clean the place out for (say) two years, and then let him get back to doing his proper job at SAF.

Frankly, I don’t actually care what Trump does.  What I want is for the DOfuckingJ to stop harassing gun owners and go after the real criminals.  And to do it quickly.  If DJT can achieve that with his choice of Blondie’s replacement, so much the better.

*The Tiahrt Amendment is a provision of the U.S. Department of Justice 2003 appropriations bill that prohibits the National Tracing Center of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) from releasing information from its firearms trace database to anyone other than a law enforcement agency or prosecutor in connection with a criminal investigation. This precludes gun trace data from being used in academic research of gun use in crime.  Additionally, the law blocks any data legally released from being admissible in civil lawsuits against gun sellers or manufacturers.