Biden-Harris anti-gun executive orders: Should we be the tortoise or the hare?

One advantage the president has is in choosing his people, the executive management who will implement his policies. You get to correct your predecessor’s errors in a very big way.

Let’s look at the infringements that the Biden-Harris regime has imposed on the Second Amendment. That seems like a narrow scope of concern, but the analysis is equally applicable to most of our other rights, as well. The obvious step would be to rescind the existing executive orders. It is true that that would work, but that isn’t the best answer in every case.

For example, let’s look at the Biden administration’s executive orders that turned you into a gun dealer. At its surface, this reinterpretation of law was put in place to stop “rogue” gun shops from selling guns to known criminals. When you dig deeper, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) is now able to call you a “dealer involved in the business of buying and selling firearms” if you offer to buy or offer to sell a single gun.

You don’t even have to complete a single sale to be considered a gun dealer. The prosecution is the punishment because federal agents are spending government money to prosecute you while you have to pay for lawyers to defend you and your family after you tried to sell your gun back to your brother. Note that the ATF considers the Washington DC police department to be a “rogue firearms dealer.” Watch what happens now that a pro-rights president is in the White House.

President Donald J. Trump could overturn the most onerous executive orders. The problem with that approach is that the next gun-grabbing Democrat in the White House could simply reinstate those same orders or worse.

Strategy: Overstep on purpose to make SCOTUS shoot it down

Instead of playing games on the policy seesaw, Trump could use the administrative state against itself to enforce long-standing changes.

To begin, order the ATF to make the broadest claims possible under Biden’s executive orders. For example, the ATF might declare that anyone who buys and sells a gun has to become a federal firearms licensee, i.e., a federally licensed gun dealer. Use the Trump-controlled Department of Justice to find a pro-rights federal district court and then bring a case against a sympathetic plaintiff. I’m thinking you want to charge a black single mom who lives in Texas and is trying to sell her gun back to her policeman boyfriend. The DOJ deliberately overstates the claims against her. Either the plaintiff or the DOJ appeals the deliberately crafted case to the federal district court. The district court declares that the Biden orders were unconstitutional. After that decision, the Biden executive orders cannot be enforced in that federal district.

Take the extreme to the top — the Supreme Court of the United States.

This is where things get interesting and we want to get the U.S. Supreme Court brought into play. The lower circuit court has said that Biden’s rule is unconstitutional. The solicitor general and the Trump administration, along with the DOJ, appeal the case to SCOTUS in such a way that they are sure to lose. Now the Biden executive orders are declared unconstitutional across the entire U.S.

The advantage is the wider scope of a pro-rights decision. Those court decisions cannot be easily overturned by the next Democratic administration. The disadvantage is that our rights are violated for several additional years as the court case winds its way through our legal system. Too often, our elected representatives need to appear relevant before the next news cycle and certainly before the next election. Are they — and we — willing to wait?

We can win small and fast, or we can win large and slow. We can do that with many of the rights that Biden and his handlers took from us. That choice depends on how patient we are and how much we ask our representatives to do the right thing — slowly.

Rob Morse writes about gun rights at his SlowFacts blog and hosts the Self Defense Gun Stories Podcast and co-hosts the Polite Society Podcast.

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