The Justice Department is quietly rearranging its internal map, carving out a fresh outpost devoted entirely to guarding the nation’s gun rights. This new enclave — the Second Amendment Rights Section — is set to unfurl its signboard on December 4, nestled inside the civil rights division, an address once synonymous with policing discrimination and systemic abuses.
Its mission: scrutinize local rules, approvals, and policies that may be tightening the screws on the right to bear arms. The move traces its lineage to a February directive from the White House, which tasked the attorney general with surveying the entire federal landscape for anything resembling a curb on gun ownership.
This recalibration lands in a country already divided on firearms like few other issues. With hundreds of mass shootings logged this year, the nation seesaws between calls for greater restrictions and demands for broader freedoms. Into this tension, the department is injecting a structural shift that critics say tilts the civil rights machinery away from its historical purpose.
Some see the new focus as redefining what civil rights even mean. Former division insiders warn that chasing gun cases under the same banner once used to confront segregation and abusive policing risks shrinking the wider mission — turning a wide-angle lens into a pinhole.
The department has already stepped into disputes this year, including a probe into claims that a major sheriff’s office dragged its feet on concealed-carry permits. And the broader backdrop reveals a pattern: retreats from longstanding oversight agreements with cities and agencies once monitored for problematic policing.
Congress doesn’t get a vote on the new structure, but it does get notice — and has received word that the shift can be executed without new funding or additional approval. The machinery, DOJ says, is already in place. The reorientation, however, is something the country is still debating.
