Trump Skips Guns in Flurry of Day One Executive Orders
Gun policy did not factor into the new President’s immediate priorities.
Shortly after President Donald Trump officially swore in for his second term on Monday, he quickly signed dozens of sweeping executive orders to walk back several Biden-era policies and fulfill multiple prominent campaign promises. His actions included declaring a “national energy emergency,” a bid to end birthright citizenship, withdrawal from the World Health Organization and Paris Climate Agreement, a full pardon for roughly 1,500 January 6th defendants, and more.
Left out of the policy blitz was anything having to do with advancing gun-rights priorities or rescinding the Biden Administration’s gun-control policy achievements. The Trump Administration also left the Second Amendment and gun policy off of its revamped “priorities” page on the White House website.
The omission of any gun policy action comes despite the President pledging speedy reversals of former President Biden’s executive orders to gun-rights supporters on the campaign trail earlier this year.
“Every single Biden attack on gun owners and manufacturers will be terminated my very first week back in office,” Trump told a crowd of NRA members at the group’s Great American Outdoor Show last February.
His decision not to do so on day one places him on the clock to make good on those promises to gun voters the same way he did to immigration hawks and other key MAGA constituencies. If he chooses not to, it could be another sign that guns are low in the pecking order amongst the second Trump Administration’s prerogatives.
For instance, though some of the President’s Day One executive orders were sweeping representations of longstanding Trumpian concerns, others were relative novelties, including directives to rename the Gulf of Mexico and Alaska’s Denali mountain and promote beautiful architecture.
At the same time, some of the moves Trump pledged to gun-rights advocates were already accomplished by the time he got to the Oval Office on Monday. During a speech at the NRA annual meeting last May, he promised NRA members he would fire Steven Dettelbach, Biden’s chosen director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), on “day one.” Before he could do so, however, Dettelbach preemptively tendered his resignation effective January 18.
Others may be happening without any formal publicity. Shortly after his reelection in November, the National Shooting Sports Foundation called on Trump to dismantle the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention, an executive body created by his predecessor to promote gun-control measures. Though he did not issue any public directive on the matter, the office’s website appears to have been taken offline shortly after his inauguration. Although, many other sections of the White House website also appear to be down and it’s unclear what the status of the office is today.
The Trump White House did not respond to a request for comment.
Still, the President appears yet to have taken action to spur some of the more far-reaching instances of rolling back Biden’s gun policies. These more closely-watched options could include orders directing the ATF to rescind agency regulations that banned so-called ghost gun kits, reclassified pistols equipped with stabilizing braces as short-barreled rifles, and expanded criteria for who must be federally licensed to sell used guns adopted under the prior administration that have rankled gun-rights advocates and resulted in prolonged courtroom fights.
While the road to rescinding those rules will likely be long and bumpy, initiating the process could be as simple as a stroke of the President’s pen–in the same way they were first set into motion.
