Dear President Trump: 2A Fixes for Your First Day

Dear President-Elect Trump,

We went to the polls and voted in overwhelming numbers for a lot of reasons, but here at Popular EDC, the Second Amendment reigns. The last four years have been a bit of a circus of anti-2A sentiment from the Oval Office, and We the People have clearly asked for that to end. But it goes much further than the excesses of the Biden/Harris administration. The most serious infringements on our gun rights date back decades, but that doesn’t mean the fix couldn’t start on Day One of your second administration. Here’s our pro-Second Amendment wishlist of action items that’ll cement your place in history as the best friend the Second Amendment ever had.

Make silencers legal again.

President-Elect Trump, we’ve been impressed and encouraged by your staunch support in the Second Amendment, even in the wake of an attempt on your life committed with a firearm. But there’s currently a safety-oriented device that’s being regulated on a Federal level for no reason we can determine: silencers.

Currently, suppressors are treated as if they were machine guns. This is absolute insanity. A silencer is nothing more than a muffler for your gun. Its only purpose is to reduce the report to levels that aren’t instantly damaging to the shooter’s hearing. Suppressors make shooting ranges better civic neighbors, too. People who live near popular ranges often complain about the noise, and it’s hard not to sympathize with them a bit. It’s time to revive, pass and sign the Hearing Protection Act, which removes silencers from the definition of firearms for purposes of the National Firearms Act.

Make the ATF accountable again.

Mr. Trump, this is the deepest and most polluted part of the swamp, and it deserves to be drained first. The ATF has had a very long run of doing more or less exactly as it pleases to the American public. From no-knock, wrong-address raids, to arbitrarily changing the rules about what is and is not a firearm, to no-warrant home visits in which ATF agents demand to see homeowners’ guns for no particular stated reason, the ATF has actively and cheerfully infringed on Americans’ rights for decades with little to no accountability.

It’s time for all that to end. Sure, the federal government has a role in regulating the interstate trade of firearms … but the ATF got out of that business a long time ago. Put them back into that business, and if they don’t like it? Fire them and divide their duties among the FBI and the IRS.

Make sick people safe from disarmament again.

As of right now, there are 38 states that allow the use of marijuana for medical purposes. There’s a good reason for this: Cannabis has a low addiction potential, a narrow (and very well-understood) side-effect profile, and it’s cheap and easy to produce en masse. From arthritic Boomers to insomniac Zoomers, millions of Americans use cannabis for medical reasons. And as it stands right now, each of them is prohibited from owning a firearm per federal law.

People who drink alcohol are not forbidden the use of firearms. People who are prescribed opiate-based painkillers are not forbidden the use of firearms. So why is it okay to infringe on the Second Amendment rights of citizens who have done something that’s perfectly legal in their state of residence? It isn’t, so please, Mr. Trump, ask Congress to fix this one for America’s cannabis patients.

Don’t ever pass knee-jerk legislation that infringes on us again.

Mr. Trump, we haven’t forgotten about the bump-stock ban. This knee-jerk, emotionally driven law that was passed in the wake of a tragedy has done nothing to make America safer. Your support of it caused many Second Amendment supporters to skip the polls in 2018, and a lot of down-ticket Republicans in the states paid the price. Please remember that it was our #gunvote that put you in office, and we will use it again if our rights are not respected.

What’s on your Second Amendment wishlist for Trump’s first 100 days? Tell us in the comments!