Being at a higher level than for the State/Local thread thought I'd put this here. Interesting take on the goings-on in Mordor on the Potomac. From
The Reload, linked here.
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Gun-Rights Groups Chafe at DC Takeover Tactics, Gun Arrests
Stephen Gutowski August 22, 2025 5:05 am
Gun-rights activists are upset with some of the stories coming out of the nation’s capital during the federal takeover of local policing.
The Trump Administration’s deployment of dozens of ATF agents to Washington, DC, neighborhoods and its touting of certain gun arrests have garnered backlash among a key constituency. All of the gun groups that spoke to The Reload raised concerns around some of the tactics and charges being employed during the federal takeover.
“It is deeply troubling that any administration would deploy federal agents that should not exist to enforce immoral and unconstitutional laws that should not exist, on behalf of an agency that should not exist,” Firearms Policy Coalition President Brandon Combs told The Reload. “If the Trump Administration is serious about protecting Second Amendment rights then it should start actually doing it.”
“The National Association for Gun Rights has serious concerns about what we’re seeing in Washington, DC right now,” Taylor Rhodes, the group’s director of communications, told The Reload. “ATF agents have no business doing neighborhood patrols, stopping citizens over cigarettes or a case of beer in the back seat. This is the same agency that gave us Ruby Ridge, Waco, and have fought against law-abiding gun owners every chance they have, and now they’re walking the streets of our nation’s capital like a domestic police force.”
The complaints follow the Trump administration’s order for at least 30 ATF agents to patrol DC as part of its takeover of the city’s police department and mobilization of its National Guard. They could dampen gun owners’ support for the administration, despite some of the pro-gun initiatives it has undertaken in other areas. That prospect may restrain some of the administration’s plans for expanding the operation inside DC or, as President Trump has previously suggested, to other American cities.
Last Monday, Trump ordered hundreds of federal law enforcement agents to begin patrolling DC after an assault against a former DOGE staffer. He soon bolstered that effort with National Guard troops and used emergency powers to implement a takeover of the Metropolitan Police Department, despite city statistics showing the city is experiencing a similar crime decline as the rest of the country. The administration agreed to back off on some of its attempted policy and personnel changes after city officials pushed back in court, though.
The White House and ATF have consistently highlighted the seizure of guns in the District as evidence that its operation is working.
A spokesperson, who said the White House is only giving background comments on the DC operation since it involves ongoing investigations, touted the seizure of what they described as “86 illegal firearms” since August 7th. They told The Reload that “legal guns from law-abiding citizens are not being seized” as part of the operation.
However, many gun-rights activists are unsatisfied with that explanation. Luis Valdes, a Gun Owners of America (GOA) spokesman and director of its Florida chapter, said some of the laws the administration is using to seize guns are unconstitutional.
“These single charge violations of people carrying without a permit or possessing an unregistered firearm, those are charges and crimes that shouldn’t exist to begin with,” he told The Reload.
Valdes, a former law enforcement officer, said GOA didn’t object to arrests of people who are accused of using guns to carry out violent crimes. But he said ATF agents doing street patrols and law enforcement arresting residents for mere gun possession crimes raise alarm bells.
“Proactive patrols are good, but the danger here, especially with ATF, is the unlawful and unconstitutional actions that they’re taking, like arresting people for simply carrying a firearm without a permit,” he said. “Right now, in over half of the country, that’s not even a crime. You don’t need a permit to carry a firearm. So, the fact that they are still pressing that in our nation’s capital is a disservice to the American public. These law enforcement resources should actually be tasked toward more serious matters at hand, like legitimate gang activity, drug distribution, violent crime, carjacking–things of that sort.”
Rhodes echoed that sentiment and said the National Association for Gun Rights (NAGR) opposes the administration’s plans to expand the operation.
“If the President truly wants to fight crime, he should focus on prosecuting violent criminals, not using federal gun cops to intimidate ordinary Americans,” he said. “NAGR will oppose any effort to normalize this kind of federal occupation, whether in D.C. or any other city.”
The White House wouldn’t say how many of the gun arrests were standalone gun possession charges against people without previous records and how many were connected to other crimes. However, it did provide a short list of suspected gun crimes for which people have been arrested during the operation.
It said officers seized two firearms over an outstanding warrant for assault with a deadly weapon, they confiscated a Glock 21 with “a high-capacity magazine” from somebody carrying without a permit who they also charged with possession of a controlled substance, and took one from somebody they arrested for an outstanding warrant for possession of a firearm and theft. The other gun seizure examples the White House gave were for charges the gun-rights advocates objected to. Those include an outstanding warrant for unregistered firearms and carrying a “Smith and Wesson Handgun with 10 rounds of ammunition” without a license.
“Simply stopping someone on the street, doing a Terry pat on them, seeing that they have a firearm, and then arresting them?” Valdes said. “That’s wrong.”
The White House also pointed to its efforts to reduce gun-carry permitting hurdles and US Attorney Jeanine Pirro’s directive not to prosecute residents for carrying rifles or shotguns as part of its efforts to protect gun rights in the city. Valdes said he appreciated those moves, but said they don’t overcome concerns raised by the administration’s other actions.
“That’s a step in the right direction, but the US Attorney in DC should go a step further and just say we’re not going to prosecute law-abiding Americans for carrying a firearm without a permit, period,” he said.
Some gun-rights activists also questioned the use of National Guard troops during the operation. Lara Smith, national spokesperson for The Liberal Gun Club, agreed the ATF’s involvement in neighborhood patrolling is “really problematic and makes no sense.” But she said her group is equally worried about troops being used for civil law enforcement–even if, as The Dispatch reports, they haven’t yet been involved in any direct police action.
“There’s no evidence that there’s actually a crime surge necessitating the National Guard,” she told The Reload. “That’s wildly problematic. It feels like a test run of what are people going to let us do? Not like a technical test run, but ‘what can we get away with’?”
She said her members are concerned the troops, some of whom are set to start carrying guns during the DC deployment, could eventually be turned on gun owners the administration doesn’t like.
“I would say our membership is horrified about the militarization of DC,” Smith said. “They see it as overreach. They’re concerned that it means the administration is going to start coming after lawful gun owners who are on the left.”
Valdes, who said he worked with National Guard troops during his time in law enforcement, said he hadn’t seen any signs that the DC deployment was out of the ordinary for the Guard. He said that aspect of the operation didn’t concern him.
“Personally, I’ve seen the National Guard deployed in law enforcement roles in numerous parts of the US, including even Puerto Rico,” he said. “So it’s, it’s not uncommon to see National Guard assets being used. I mean, I can tell you, from a law enforcement perspective, every time there was a major event in the state of Florida, whether it’s the Super Bowl, whether it’s a political campaign rally, the Daytona 500, the National Guard is deployed for that. And it’s not a riot, it’s not looting, it’s not crime. So, they’re deployed because they have assets and they have resources that local law enforcement doesn’t have.”
Other gun-rights groups haven’t signaled any concern with the DC operation to date.
The National Rifle Association didn’t respond to multiple requests for comment on the ATF or National Guard deployments. However, it posted a supportive piece on its website at the start of the operation. The group, which still has by far the most dues-paying members of any gun group, described the operation as a necessary outgrowth of local DC leadership’s failure to curtail crime.
“Fed up with a violent crime problem that has long been tolerated, and perhaps obfuscated, by D.C. officials, President Trump chose to exert his considerable federal authority to try to address the situation,” the NRA wrote on its Institute for Legislative Action website. “Since its existence, undermining Second Amendment rights has been a priority for the District’s local government. What the DC local government hasn’t done is take violent crime, and the criminals who commit it, seriously.”
[Some NRA-ILA comments follow and can be found at the link above.]
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