President Trump hit the ground running in his second term, issuing a wide range of Executive Orders, approximately 170 at the time I write this, addressing everything from Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports to Protecting Second Amendment Rights. But the latter of those two is not the only Executive order to address Americans’ right to bear arms, as the theme, in general, seems to have permeated the bigger picture, including a recent appearance in the President’s March 27 Order Making The District of Columbia Safe And Beautiful.
You might think the nation’s capital would be among the safer parts of the United States to visit, but you’d be wrong. In 2023, the District of Columbia was home to a violent crime rate that rivaled any state in the country, beating second place by a wide margin with 1,150.9 violent crimes per 100,000 within the population. As a guy who likes to give credit where it’s due, I will report that D.C. has been seeing improvement in recent years, and while there is still a lot of work to be done, a reduction in violent crime scratched that itch that makes me have to find an answer to the question, why?
In 2017, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia decided that the Second Amendment guarantees law-abiding citizens the right to carry firearms in the nation’s capital following 2016 arguments in Wrenn v. District of Columbia.
“Reading the Amendment, applying Heller I’s reasoning, and crediting key early sources, we conclude: the individual right to carry common firearms beyond the home for self-defense—even in densely populated areas, even for those lacking special self-defense needs—falls within the core of the Second Amendment’s protections,” the court concluded.
Could the “shall-issue” status since Wrenn have contributed to the declining, albeit still problematic, D.C. violent crime rate? According to Democrats, the answer would be unequivocally no, but since deceit and foolishness are ingrained in their DNA, let’s turn to some numbers, shall we? Before Wrenn, Americans were required to show an extraordinary need to obtain a carry permit, but the gatekeepers were very selective nonetheless. How selective? Up until that point, there were only 123 permits (want to guess who?) in the District. That grew significantly to 17,647 as of a March 2024 report by the Washington Post.
This single correlation between an increase in the ability to defend innocent lives and the decrease in violent crime should be enough to put liberal shysters out of business, but unfortunately, that’s not how flocks of sheep function. Think about the vapid propaganda they spread daily, then understand that the largest decrease in D.C.’s violent crime rate in history comes at a time when the concealed carry permit numbers are up by over 14,000%. Let that sink in.
Despite the increase in concealed carry permits causing a less friendly environment for violent criminals to find soft targets, D.C.’s permit requirements and application process remain cumbersome and far more onerous than almost all other jurisdictions, ranking close to last when it comes to the percentage of the adult population permitted to carry a concealed firearm, according to the Crime Prevention Research Center president, John R. Lott Jr. in his paper, Concealed Carry Permit Holders Across the United States: 2024.
Now, the Trump administration has moved to expedite the D.C. permitting process while it deals with the issue of infringements across the nation. Apparently, rulings like those in Wrenn and the landmark 2022 United States Supreme Court case, New York State Rifle & Pistol Assoc. v. Bruen, were not enough to drive the point that the Second Amendment protects the right to bear arms outside the home for self-defense, just as Justice Clarence Thomas predicted.
“because any permitting scheme can be put toward abusive ends, we do not rule out constitutional challenges to shall-issue regimes where, for example, lengthy wait times in processing license applications or exorbitant fees deny ordinary citizens their right to public carry,” Justice Thomas wrote with foresight into the scams and abuse of process that would take place in subversive retaliation by the left.
It has become painstakingly clear that passing laws is not enough to stop criminals, and this is true not only in the case of violent street thugs but also in the case of the criminals within local, state, and federal governments who actively refuse to abide by rulings they don’t like. They flaunt the behavior, in fact, and continue their attacks on the Second Amendment while tying up the courts and tax dollars to litigate every article of contempt they can muster. They do this all as the Supreme Court sits back, waiting for ensuing legal challenges while doing nothing to compel lawmakers to follow the actual law.
Making The District Of Columbia Safe And Beautiful seeks to leverage the President’s Executive Powers over the federal government to ensure Americans living in and traveling to D.C. feel safe at all times and in all public spaces, making it clear that law-abiding citizens should be empowered to exercise their Second Amendment rights everywhere in America. The Order includes the establishment of a D.C. Safe and Beautiful Task Force to carry out its directives, including language demanding a timely and low-cost permitting process.
“…collaborating with appropriate local government entities to provide assistance to increase the speed and lower the cost of processing concealed carry license requests in the District of Columbia,” the Executive Order states.
Concurrently, the United States Department of Justice has opened an investigation into the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department to determine if that agency is engaged in the same pattern that deprives law-abiding Californians of their Second Amendment rights by way of onerous delays and fees. The DOJ has already hinted, in that case, that it hopes the investigation will encourage other states and localities to follow suit, or else it is prepared to open investigations into Second Amendment violations such as this across America.
While these steps are all in the right direction, there is an absolute urgency for the President and lawmakers to pass binding legislation so that Americans don’t suffer the whiplash of having their fundamental rights come and go quickly with every passing regime. All of this looks very positive thus far, but I live in a free state, where restrictions on my rights are those of the federal government, and it is important to realize that they are among the biggest offenders when it comes to infringing on the right to bear arms. See the National Firearms Act of 1934 (NFA), the Gun Control Act of 1968 (GCA), and the Hughes Amendment in the Firearms Owners Protection Act of 1986 (FOPA). Until the federal government has self-reflected and changed course on these actions, I am not willing to declare them defenders of anything, and I would encourage this administration and the DOJ not to use these positive steps forward as smokescreens to cover their own complicity, because many of us have been around long enough to see through that, and we’re not falling for it.
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