SAF founder Alan M. Gottlieb
By Dave Workman
Senior Editor
Two of the nation’s leading gun rights organizations are encouraging President-elect Donald Trump to have his attorney general appoint an assistant whose only job will be to go after state and local Second Amendment abuses including “laws designed specifically to infringe on the rights of honest firearms owners.”
Their goal is to “make the Second Amendment great again.”
The Second Amendment Foundation and its sister organization, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms said in a joint news release that they are hoping Trump will instruct the new attorney general early next year “to name a special assistant whose job would be to protect Second Amendment rights.”
“In the past,” said SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb, “the Department of Justice has taken action against various other civil and constitutional rights abuses. It is time for the DOJ to prosecute violations of the Second Amendment and federal laws including the Firearms Owners Protection Act, by state and local governments. State and local governments that adopt laws designed specifically to infringe on the rights of honest firearms owners or discourage people from exercising their right to keep and bear arms for legitimate reasons, including self-defense should be held accountable.”
He specifically pointed to gun laws in New Jersey, Maryland, New York, California and Washington, D.C. Those are jurisdictions that make it difficult, and in many cases impossible, for average middle-class citizens to get concealed carry permits and otherwise exercise their rights.
Gottlieb also said there should be investigations into possible violations of the Firearm Owners Protection Act, a federal law passed in 1985 that is supposed to protect traveling armed citizens from running afoul of local laws while they are in transit.
“It would also be the task of this special assistant AG to make sure the DOJ does not take anti-Second Amendment positions on any legal action,” Gottlieb said in a prepared statement. “This individual would also serve as a liaison with gun rights organizations, working with them rather than against them to assure that the nation’s laws are used to prosecute criminals rather than persecute law-abiding gun owners.
“Donald Trump has been given an opportunity to right so many of the wrongs that have been committed against millions of citizens whose only crime has been a wish to exercise their constitutionally-delineated civil rights,” he observed. “He campaigned on a pledge to make America great again. One part of that effort would be to make the Second Amendment great again.”
