Inside the Left's Failed Anti-Gun Crusade & the Coming 2A Golden Age

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Over the past 15 years, the Left has waged an all-out war against the Second Amendment with the goal of limiting and abolishing it altogether. Armed with a limitless ocean of dark money, they've concocted endless media reports and grim warnings about growing "gun violence" and mass shootings across America. For years, the plan seemed to work, and the nation inched painfully toward a future of total gun confiscation to match dismal Australia and Great Britain. Only a handful of plucky conservative lawyers and key Supreme Court decisions stood between the Constitution and despotism.

Then the Left's lobbying machine blew up, the mass hysteria campaign backfired—and America emerged more in favor of protecting the Second Amendment than ever before. What happened?

Mark the Biden administration's four miserable years as the peak of the anti-gun crusade which began in earnest with Barack Obama. More than the Second Amendment was on the line in 2024; the future of limited, constitutional government itself was on the ballot. And Americans overwhelmingly voted for liberty over tyranny. Had Kamala Harris—the most radical nominee for president in U.S. history—won the race for the White House, that crusade would almost certainly have marched closer to total confiscation. Harris said the quiet part out loud: The Left wants gun control, not gun safety.

Now Democrats are faced with the once-unthinkable: Americans are more pro-gun than they have been in years. Recent polling shows nearly 65 percent support preserving the Second Amendment and the individual right to self-defense.

Ironically, the relentless war on guns has placed conservatives in the strongest position they've been in for generations when it comes to protecting the Second Amendment. Thanks to landmark Supreme Court rulings like District of Columbia v. Heller (2008) and New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen (2022), the nation's high court has affirmed that the right to keep and bear arms is an individual, constitutionally protected freedom. Americans want leaders like President Donald Trump who will fight for those rights.

We've had some powerful victories, but now's the time to press ahead and smash the Left's lobbying machine for good. Second Amendment advocates must go on the offensive and roll back unconstitutional restrictions that remain on the books by expanding constitutional carry, challenging restrictive laws in court, strengthening state preemption laws, and defunding anti-gun bureaucracies.

In this Restoration News investigation, we go inside the gun control lobbying machine to show Americans how close they came to losing the fight for their rights—and what they must do now to permanently protect them from radical leftists in the future.

It Wasn't Supposed to End This Way

If you told gun control advocates 15 years ago that all of their hard work and funding would culminate in a pro-Second Amendment America, they probably wouldn't believe you.

The new age of gun control or "gun violence prevention" began under former President Barack Obama in the early 2010s and continued until the end of the Biden era in 2024. The emotional rhetoric of the Obama era, amplified in the aftermath of tragic shootings, became a 15-year catalyst that propelled the anti-gun lobby to some of the toughest fights in Washington.

The first great leap this new "gun violence' effort took was in 2013, when President Obama launched executive actions aimed at expanding background checks and promoting "gun safety." The executive action followed the tragic Sandy Hook school shooting in Connecticut, and showcased the playbook the Left would continue to use for years to come.

"From 2010 until 2019, Democrats controlled the field when it came to firearm legislation, and all of their work placed former President Joe Biden in the perfect position to drive the nail home."

The media and its activist allies realized that if they framed Obama's legislation as "lifesaving" and directed every argument towards "protecting children," Americans would fall in line.

That same year, Democrats charged forward with new gun control attempts with the Assault Weapons Ban of 2013 and the Manchin-Toomey Amendment, requiring universal background checks. Both failed in Congress due to strong opposition.

Instead, Democrats turned to tightening gun laws in blue states. New York and Maryland enacted strict bans on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, illustrating the growing divide between pro-gun and anti-gun states. Massachusetts imposed stricter licensing requirements and imposed an assault weapon ban. The Left, while never losing sight of its national objectives, shifted its focus away from national changes in favor of smaller statewide victories—a trend that would continue throughout the late 2010s.

Between 2014 and 2018, national gun control debates intensified. Democrats continued introducing restrictive legislation at the federal level, including the Domestic Violence Gun Homicide Prevention Act (2014) and the No Fly, No Buy initiative, both of which failed. 

President Obama once again bypassed Congress in 2016 with executive orders expanding background checks and increasing enforcement. Once in office, President Donald Trump rolled back some—but not all—of these measures, including a regulation that would've restricted gun purchases for individuals receiving Social Security disability benefits. 

In 2018, the Parkland school shooting led to renewed Democratic efforts for stricter gun laws, but the push for universal background checks and assault weapon bans continued to stall at the federal level.

The Democrat-controlled House passed the Bipartisan Background Checks Act in 2019, which would've expanded background checks to private gun sales but stalled in the Senate. Similarly, the Extreme Risk Protection Order Act aimed to incentivize state-level red flag laws, but failed to advance. In 2020, the Gun Violence Prevention and Community Safety Act proposed sweeping new restrictions, including a national gun registry, but faced strong opposition and died in committee. 

Despite these failures, Democratic-controlled states moved ahead with their own gun control measures. Democrats in Virginia, Colorado, and Nevada expanded background checks and passed red flag laws, while California and Illinois imposed additional restrictions on firearm ownership.

From 2010 until 2019, Democrats controlled the field when it came to firearm legislation, and all of their work placed former President Joe Biden in the perfect position to drive the nail home.

The Biden Era

The pro- and anti-gun divide only grew during the Biden administration, as Republicans in Congress blocked numerous attempts to restrict firearms nationwide and blue states further restricted law-abiding Americans' rights to self-defense.

Oregon passed Ballot Measure 114 requiring background checks, firearm training, fingerprint collection and a permit to purchase any firearm. California eyed increased taxes for firearm manufacturers and special purchasing codes for gun stores.

Illinois Democrats passed HB 5471, which outlawed the sale, manufacture, possession and purchase of "assault-style" weapons, "assault weapon" attachments, and .50-caliber cartridges, while also limiting magazine capacity to 10 rounds for long guns and 15 rounds for handguns.

In Washington, the Biden administration snuck a "bipartisan" gun control bill through Congress. The Bipartisan Safer Communities Act—which passed on a near-party-line vote with 14 House and 14 Republican Senators voting "aye"—expanded background checks for buyers under 21, provided funding for mental health programs, and "encouraged" states to adopt red flag laws.

Red flag laws, an unconstitutional form of firearm confiscation, became a staple of the Bipartisan Safer Community Act. If states wanted funding for mental health, they needed to implement red flag laws—thus many were caught in a trap disguised as a gift.

"To get a warrant, the government must show probable cause that there's an actual violation of a law that has occurred or is imminently going to occur," said attorney Edward Paltzik of Bochner PLLC and the National Constitutional Law Union. "It's not enough to just say, hey, this guy is dangerous. Confiscating firearms because an individual is 'dangerous' is no different than seizing that individual's bank account because he is 'dishonest.'" 

In the final years of the Biden-Harris administration, Democrats began to swing for the fences with all forms of infringement.

On the federal level, the White House lobbied for "assault weapon" bans and former Vice President Kamala Harris made it her personal goal to enforce red flag laws. The administration even established a White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention—criticized by Second Amendment advocates as a backdoor policy foothold from the anti-gun lobby.

The Biden administration successfully built on the Obama era anti-gun lobby, but a similar trend continued to persist. Blue states could pass extreme gun laws, but Congress would not let assault weapon bans or universal background checks through the legislature.

Continually faced with a congressional blockade, the Biden administration decided to abuse the federal movement by backdooring gun policy through three letter agencies. The worst offender: The ATF.

America's Stasi?

Under the Biden administration, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) became a federal force the could've been inspired by George Orwell's 1984.

In the 1990s, Republicans and many Democrats alike believed the ATF had become overgrown and needed to be scaled back. Even former Democratic President Bill Clinton called on the agency to reduce the number of individuals it defined as firearm dealers because it had exceeded its mandate.

But Obama and Biden shared a different goal. 

In 2016, Obama hired an additional 200 ATF investigators to crack down on lawful gun dealers across America. Less than five years later, Biden used those same agents to enforce a slew of unconstitutional regulations implemented by the ATF without congressional approval—and the results were disastrous.

In September 2023, the ATF, under director Steven Dettelbach, announced a proposed rule (ATF2022R-17) to update the definition of "engaged in the business" of firearm dealing. The new rule required everyday Americans to register for a dealer's license if they profited off the sale of a firearm—even if it was a routine transaction between private collectors.

"Interim ATF director Kash Patel is now working to dismantle the regulatory agency and return it to its initial purpose—which isn't persecuting law-abiding Americans."

The rule overstepped the initial definition of "engaged in the business" established by Congress, which is only applied to "a dealer in firearms," and placed nearly 1.3 million Americans (by the ATF's own reckoning) in the crosshairs for criminal charges for simply selling a shotgun to a friend.

The proposed rule was a strategic move to bolster the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act signed by Biden in 2022 and was the Biden administration's shadiest attempt to move closer to universal background checks without new legislation. 

Biden's March 2023 executive order even called for the executive branch to move towards universal background checks, despite Congress voting against universal background checks in 2013.

In 2021, the Biden Administration's ATF announced a new "Zero Tolerance" policy for revoking the licenses of firearm sellers, known as Federal Firearms Licensees ("FFLs"). The updated policy allowed the ATF to shut down gun shops for minor clerical errors instead of working with the stores to update procedure—like a regulatory agency should do.

As a result, FFL revocations hit a 16-year high.

The most tragic and damning decision the Biden administration authorized, was the cold-blooded murder of executive director of Bill and Hillary Clinton National Airport Brian Malinowski during an ATF raid.

On a chilly March morning in Little Rock, Arkansas, ATF agents tragically shot dead 53-year-old Malinowski in his own home at 6 a.m. after forcibly entering, just 28 seconds after they knocked. Their rationale? Malinowski, an ardent collector, had amassed around 150 firearms over a span of three years, which is completely legal, and engaged in transactions with fellow collectors—an action the ATF believed violated an ambiguous gun law from the 1980s.

The bleary-eyed Malinowski—who, startled awake, very likely believed his home was being burglarized—fired at agents, prompting them to fire back, resulting in a fatal head shot. But the situation was a mess from the start. The ATF should have never placed him in a position where he was actively defending his home from what he believed were intruders.

After all, Arkansas's castle doctrine allows homeowners to use "a degree of force that he or she reasonably believes to be necessary" while defending themselves or others.

After the raid, the ATF Agents were cleared of any wrongdoing and the event was completely swept under the rug with numerous questions unanswered. The murder of Malinowski serves as a blinding example of the dangers of allowing the federal government to overstep its bounds. 

Thankfully, interim ATF director Kash Patel is now working to dismantle the regulatory agency and return it to its initial purpose—which isn't persecuting law-abiding Americans.

Kamala and the Downfall of the Anti-Gun Lobby

The Biden administration's assault on the Second Amendment helped many Americans see the true intent of the anti-gun lobby, but the sole person responsible for the decline of the gun control movement in America is former Vice President and failed presidential candidate Kamala Harris.

The Harris campaign was proved the straw that broke the camel's back and exposed the true goal of gun control.

Harris, the most anti-gun candidate ever nominated by a major political party, openly called for a ban on so-called "assault weapons" and even floated buy-back programs, which she'd organized and carried out while serving as the California Attorney General.

Harris has a long history of gun control extremism. While serving as the San Francisco District attorney, she told Americans she would break into their homes to accomplish her goals. "Just because you legally possess a gun in the sanctity of your locked home doesn't mean that we're not going to walk into that home and check to see if you're being responsible," she said in 2007.

During her first presidential bid in 2019, Harris called confiscation of semi-automatic firearms "a good idea," emphasizing the need to "take those guns off the streets" at a New Hampshire campaign event. 

On the Tonight Show, she reaffirmed support for a mandatory national buy-back program, stating, "A buy-back program is a good idea . . . we need to do it the right way." 

She repeated this stance at an MSNBC gun control forum (Oct. 3, 2019) and in a NBC Nightly News interview (Nov. 2019), advocating for a compulsory buy-back program.

Americans had already begun to question gun control under Biden, but the extreme stances of California Democrat Kamala Harris truly opened their eyes to the long-term goals Democrats had for the Second Amendment.

A New Hope

With Harris at the helm, Democrats veered into outright extremism—and Americans took notice. From stripping law-abiding citizens of their Second Amendment rights while extending protections to illegal immigrants to pushing red flag laws that allowed firearm confiscation without due process, Americans began to see the darker side of Democrat policies.

As Harris cackled about barging into American homes to inspect firearms while simultaneously calling for a ban on all semi-automatic weapons, crime rates soared under her own policies. This left Americans in a dire predicament: they couldn't safely walk their own neighborhoods due to skyrocketing crime, and they couldn't legally carry firearms to protect themselves.

But those days are behind us, thanks to President Donald Trump.

On the campaign trail, Trump pledged to roll back all Biden-era ATF policies, remove ATF Director Steve Dettelbach, end the agency's "Zero Tolerance" crackdown on the firearm industry, and sign the Constitutional Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act into law.

Immediately after taking office, Trump dismantled the controversial White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention, which had allowed activists from Everytown for Gun Safety to infiltrate the administration and push their own policies.

In February, he signed a Second Amendment executive order directing the U.S. Attorney General to conduct a comprehensive review and provide recommendations to strengthen gun rights nationwide. More specifically, it mandated an evaluation of every firearm restriction imposed by the Biden administration, with a plan to reverse them.

Beyond undoing anti-gun policies, the executive order also calls for a full government review to further reinforce and expand Second Amendment protections.

The anti-gun lobby is retreating in the wake of Democrats' drubbing in the 2024 election, and under the second Trump administration gun owners can exercise their rights without fear of persecution. Amazingly, polling data now shows that support for gun control is at its lowest point in over a decade. 

In 2013, a CBS News poll and other similar polling showed that 54% of Americans favored stricter gun laws while 34% wanted to keep things where they were. Only 9% favored less strict gun laws.

By 2018, fully 67% of Americans wanted stricter gun laws while just only 4% wanted looser gun laws.

Now 64% of Americans are strongly or somewhat in favor of the Second Amendment and the right to bear arms, according to a 2024 Marquette University Law School poll. Only 14% were opposed.

Much of the success conservatives are experiencing stems from the Supreme Court's landmark rulings in Heller and Bruen. These decisions reaffirmed the Second Amendment and clarified every American's individual right to carry a firearm.

The 2022 Bruen decision requires new firearm laws be clearly rooted in the historical tradition of firearm regulation to be constitutional. As a result, numerous restrictive laws in blue states were challenged in court. Rather than revising or repealing these laws to align with the Supreme Court's ruling, Democrat lawyers attempted to justify them by citing racist laws from the 1800s that once barred Black Americans and Catholics from owning firearms.

This outlandish strategy only reinforced the perception that the Left is willing to go to any length to restrict firearm ownership. Despite their best efforts to undermine the Second Amendment, advocacy groups like Gun Owners of America, the Second Amendment Foundation, and the NRA fought relentless court battles to overturn unconstitutional laws that penalized law-abiding Americans.

While Kamala Harris made it clear that the Left ultimately sought to confiscate firearms, Second Amendment advocacy groups reminded Americans of the true purpose of the amendment and showed that they were on the side of freedom.

Coupled with these landmark Supreme Court decisions, the work of these advocacy groups made it evident that Donald Trump was the candidate who would restore Americans' rights. And they were right.

Despite $27 million spent on gun control efforts in the 2024 presidential race, the American people rejected the anti-gun lobby and elected a president who promised to restore the Second Amendment. Now, just two months into his term, he has already shown Americans that he means business.

What We Must Do

Conservatives are back in charge with a new mandate to restore America's greatness, including our Second Amendment rights, but all Republican politicians must take this moment to fight against the gun lobby, retake ground, and implement policy that will prevent Democrats from imposing further restrictions.

It's time for bold action. Red Flag Laws must be abolished nationwide. These Orwellian policies strip Americans of their rights without due process, presuming guilt before a trial even takes place.

Lawmakers must repeal so-called "sensitive carry locations," which only disarm law-abiding citizens while criminals remain armed. Every American has the right to carry and defend themselves in public.

At the federal level, the ATF must be stripped of its unchecked power. This agency should not have the ability to reinterpret and enforce its own laws at will. It must be reduced to a simple regulatory body—or abolished altogether.

Finally, our court systems must uphold the Bruen ruling as intended. No judge should allow outdated, racist laws to be used to justify restrictions on firearm ownership. It is absurd to believe the highest court would allow such laws to be part of America's firearm tradition.

Gun policy has become so politicized that many Americans—and sadly, many lawmakers—have lost sight of the true purpose of the Second Amendment. Our forefathers freed this nation from tyranny through grit and self-determination, recognizing the absolute necessity of enshrining both the right to self-defense and the right to resist oppression. This principle is a cornerstone of protecting the American republic.

The Second Amendment stands as the foundation of our freedom, defining America as a beacon of liberty on the world stage. It also serves as a crucial safeguard for every American who seeks to protect their family, property, and constitutional rights.

When the Second Amendment falls, all other rights are at risk—because without it, the people of the United States lose their last line of defense.

We must never allow that to happen.