This is the kind of Washington announcement worth stopping everything to read carefully. On February 18, 2026, Attorney General Pam Bondi and Secretary of Veterans Affairs Doug Collins jointly announced that the Department of Veterans Affairs will immediately stop reporting veterans to the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System — NICS — solely because those veterans need a third-party fiduciary to manage their finances. Names already in NICS on that basis will be removed. The estimate I’m hearing from credible sources: somewhere between 250,000 and 300,000 veterans stand to have their Second Amendment rights restored.
That number alone is staggering. But what excites me even more is how the DOJ justified this change — they got the methodology exactly right, and that has consequences far beyond veterans’ rights.
Thirty Years of Administrative Abuse
The practice started during the Clinton administration. Under 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(4), it is unlawful for any person “adjudicated as a mental defective or who has been committed to any mental institution” to possess a firearm. Anti-gun bureaucrats inside the VA latched onto the word “adjudicated” and argued that when an unelected VA employee appointed a third-party fiduciary to help a veteran manage tax returns, pay bills, and handle financial affairs, that appointment constituted an “adjudication” that the veteran was mentally defective — forever stripping that vet of the right to keep and bear arms.
Let that sink in. A doctor fills out a form saying a veteran needs help balancing his checkbook. That piece of paper triggers a lifetime federal firearms disability with no court hearing, no adversarial process, no finding that the person is dangerous to anyone.
Gun Owners of America sounded the alarm as far back as 2009. They reported that under the Clinton-era VA practice, 90,000 veterans had already been entered into NICS on this basis. Senators Tom Coburn and Richard Burr confirmed through inquiry that these names were submitted “not on the basis of a criminal record or whether a veteran is a danger to self or others” — but purely because a bureaucrat appointed a financial fiduciary. GOA dubbed the enabling legislation the “Veterans Disarmament Act” for good reason. The number has grown enormously since 2009 as the practice continued year after year under subsequent administrations.
The Rahimi Framework Applied Correctly
Here is what I want you to understand about why this announcement matters beyond the veterans’ story: the DOJ’s press release reads like a textbook application of United States v. Rahimi, 602 U.S. 680 (2024).
In Rahimi, an 8-1 Supreme Court decision decided June 21, 2024, the Court held that when a person has been found by a court to pose a credible threat to the physical safety of another, that person may be temporarily disarmed consistent with the Second Amendment. Chief Justice Roberts wrote the majority. The holding distills to three requirements: (1) a court finding, (2) that the person is a danger to someone else, and (3) disarmament is temporary, not permanent.
The VA press release announcing this change quotes almost exactly that standard:
After a thorough review, the VA has recognized that many veterans have been deprived of their Second Amendment rights without hearings or adequate determinations that they posed a sufficient risk of danger to themselves or others.
And Attorney General Bondi stated:
It is both unlawful and unacceptable for veterans who serve our country to have their constitutional rights threatened. It has been my pleasure to partner with Secretary Doug Collins on this project, and I’m directing the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to review its regulations and propose changes that will prevent current and future violations of our veterans’ Second Amendment rights.
That language — no hearings, no danger determination — is precisely the Rahimi checklist applied in reverse. The VA fiduciary program failed it on every prong. The Trump DOJ recognized that, said so publicly, and acted.
Why This Is a Big Deal for All of Us
I have been arguing on this channel for years that Rahimi was not the disaster for Second Amendment rights that some in our community feared. My read was always that Rahimi actually handed us a powerful doctrinal weapon: it established that the only constitutionally valid basis for disarming someone under 18 U.S.C. § 922(g) is a court adjudication that they are a danger to others, not administrative convenience.
This announcement validates that reading at the highest policy level. And it opens the door to the next fight: red flag laws, or Extreme Risk Protection Orders, which in many states allow firearm confiscation on the thinnest evidentiary showing, often ex parte, before any full adversarial hearing. The DOJ’s reasoning here — no rights deprivation without a hearing and a danger finding — is a direct doctrinal challenge to how most red flag statutes operate in practice.
I also expect to see this logic applied to restoration of rights under 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1) when the pending DOJ rulemaking on felon rights restoration is finalized. If the standard across the board is Rahimi — court finding, danger determination, temporary where possible — then much of the gun-control administrative apparatus built up over three decades is on shaky ground.
The Moral Win Comes First
Before I get too deep into legal strategy, let me say this plainly: it is obscene that we sent men and women to fight for this country, they came home and needed help paying their bills, and we permanently stripped them of a constitutional right for it. No hearing. No finding of dangerousness. No due process. Three decades of that.
The organizations that fought this — Gun Owners of America and others — deserve enormous credit for staying on this issue from 2007 through today.
Getting nearly 300,000 Americans their Second Amendment rights back is a moral win first. That it also advances the doctrinal framework protecting all of our rights is a bonus. This is trend-is-our-friend news, and I will take it.
This article is based on analysis by Professor Mark W. Smith, constitutional attorney and Host of the Four Boxes Diner 2nd Amendment channel. Watch the original video here. This does not constitute legal advice.