Of all of the policies that President Donald Trump has enacted in his second term, his decision to federalize the police department in Washington, D.C. and deploy the National Guard to combat crime should be the one that the gun control lobby fully embraces. After all, D.C. has some of the most stringent gun laws in the nation, and now there are hundreds, if not thousands, more boots on the ground ready to enforce those laws.
The gun control lobby, though, is wedded to the Democratic Party, and means they’ve got to object to Trump’s decision even if it’s exactly what their ideology demands. Take Brady head Kris Brown’s hyperbolic response to Trump’s move:
“We cannot allow the president to use armed intimidation and overpolicing to further exploit D.C. residents — who already have no congressional representation — and continue his dangerous march to authoritarianism. We cannot allow the president to suggest that federalized police is an appropriate response to any and all challenges; or that federalized police do not further endanger the public, especially Black and Brown communities who live and work in or visit D.C. We know what strategies and policies reduce gun crime, and this is not it. We call on every public official in the District and around the country to condemn Trump’s moves and make clear that self-determination is a bedrock of American government from the smallest town council to the entire nation.
It always amuses me to see anti-gunners complain about “overpolicing” when their entire agenda rests on armed agents of the State enforcing the gun control laws they’ve managed to put in place. Brown’s handwringing over Trump’s “march to authoritarianism” is equally comical, given that she and other anti-gun activists have no problem whatsoever with throwing people in jail for decades for building their own firearms or possessing a magazine that can hold 17 rounds.
And since when does Brown or any other gun control activist really care about self-determination? Sure, they support repealing firearm preemption laws that mandate a uniform body of gun laws adopted by state legislatures, but it’s not like they want localities to be able to ignore gun laws that officials believe are unconstitutional. Their version of self-determination is that localities should only be able to adopt more restrictive policies than state or federal lawmakers, while condemning Second Amendment sanctuaries that object or refuse to enforce unconstitutional statutes.
“Trump’s narrative about D.C. is not based in reality or in facts. Violent crime, including crimes involving firearms, has fallen precipitously since 2023 and were at a 30-year low the day the president returned to the Oval Office. That fall is directly attributable to recent policy efforts to reduce violence, including increased investment in community-based violence intervention work being done by local D.C. residents and organizations, ward by ward. This work was supercharged with funding with the passage of the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act during the Biden-Harris administration – funding that the Trump-Vance administration is now terminating. Restoring this funding would continue to reduce violent crime more effectively than federalizing law enforcement.
There is absolutely no evidence that throwing money at local violence intervention groups is responsible for the reported decline in D.C. crime., or in other cities around the country. In fact, according to none other than the Gun Violence Archive, the number of both fatal and non-fatal shooting victims peaked in mid 2021, which was a full year before the passage of the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act. Given the slow pace of issuing government grants, most of these groups didn’t see an influx of cash until at least early 2023, when violent crime was already beginning to subside from its 2020 highs.
It’s also worth noting that, even though the Trump administration has halted hundreds of millions of dollars worth of grants, violent crime is still trending down in most of the U.S., which is further evidence that BSCA and the Biden administration aren’t responsible for any reduction in shootings, carjackings, and robberies.
It’s also funny to see Brown tout this decline in crime when she and virtually every other anti-gun activist and politician predicted that violence would skyrocket as a result of the Bruen decision in 2022. According to them, more guns being carried in public would inevitably lead to more shootings, but now they’re simply pretending they never predicted anything of the sort.
As we discussed yesterday, the police union in D.C. contends that department higher-ups have been manipulating crime reports in order to manufacture a drop in crime, so the jury’s still out on whether or not violent crime in the District has fallen precipitously as Brown claims, or even fallen at all.
I’ve written about my own concerns about the administration’s decision to deploy the National Guard and reassign federal agents to police D.C. streets; namely, the prospect of more arrests and prosecutions for violations of D.C.s draconian gun laws. But what concerns Second Amendment advocates should thrill anti-gunners like Brown, and it’s ridiculous to see them object to Trump’s decision. They have no problem whatsoever with heavy-handed enforcement of gun laws… so long as it’s a Democrat doing it.
Editor’s Note: The radical left will stop at nothing to enact their radical gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights.
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