President Trump has fired Attorney General Pam Bondi, and the Second Amendment community is left with a complicated question: should we mourn the loss or welcome a chance to fix what was broken? The honest answer is both. Bondi compiled the most pro-gun record of any attorney general in modern American history — but a critical weakness in how her Department of Justice handled Supreme Court strategy could haunt firearms rights for a generation.
The Case for Bondi as the Best Ever
Measured against every attorney general of the last half-century, Bondi’s DOJ stands alone. At President Trump’s direction, she stood up a dedicated Second Amendment working group — an unprecedented move. For the first time, the Department of Justice filed amicus briefs in state-level gun cases on the side of the Second Amendment, not against it. Harmeet Dhillon, head of the Civil Rights Division, personally argued before the Seventh Circuit in a so-called assault weapons case. The DOJ backed challenges to suppressor bans, standard-capacity magazine restrictions, and semi-automatic rifle bans in New Jersey, filing powerful briefs in Cheeseman v. Platkin and Association of New Jersey Rifle and Pistol Clubs v. Attorney General New Jersey before the Third Circuit.
In the District of Columbia, U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro brought lawsuits challenging the city’s AR-15 and AK-47 bans and helped secure the landmark Benson v. District of Columbia decision — a 2-1 ruling striking down D.C.’s magazine ban and creating a split of authority that could force the Supreme Court’s hand. In Wolford v. Lopez, the Hawaii “vampire rule” case, Sarah Harris of the Solicitor General’s office argued alongside private attorney Alan Beck that Hawaii’s concealed-carry restriction violated the Second Amendment. None of this had ever happened before. Period.
The Solicitor General Problem
Yet for all those victories, Bondi’s tenure had a glaring blind spot: the Solicitor General’s office. D. John Sauer, the Solicitor General, is broadly competent and has served the Trump administration well on many fronts. But on Second Amendment case selection — the decisions about which cases to push to the Supreme Court and which positions to take — his office committed what can only be called strategic malpractice.
Exhibit A: United States v. Hemani. The Solicitor General’s office sought certiorari in a Section 922(g) prohibited-persons case involving a defendant connected to marijuana use, cocaine, and alleged ties to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. Every first-year law student knows that bad facts make bad law. Why on earth would a purportedly pro-Second Amendment DOJ hand the Supreme Court a case where the sympathies run entirely against the gun owner?
Compare that choice to what the office declined to pursue. Reese v. ATF, out of the Fifth Circuit, established that 18-, 19-, and 20-year-olds have full Second Amendment rights — a beautifully reasoned opinion on a sympathetic fact pattern covering Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi. The Solicitor General’s office let the cert deadline pass without action. Good for those three states, but a missed opportunity to establish nationwide precedent.
Then there is Range v. Attorney General, where the Third Circuit — through judges like Stephanos Bibas, David Porter, and Thomas Hardiman — held that a lifetime gun ban for a decades-old food-stamp reporting error violated the Second Amendment. Bryan Range’s case was the most sympathetic 922(g) fact pattern imaginable. The Solicitor General’s office chose not to seek cert there either, opting instead for the Hemani debacle.
What the Next Attorney General Must Do
Someone above the Solicitor General needed to pick up the phone and say no. The AG sits above the Deputy Attorney General, the Associate Attorney General, and then the Solicitor General in the DOJ hierarchy. Bondi, whether from deference or unfamiliarity with the strategic nuances, did not exercise that authority on Second Amendment case selection. That cannot happen again.
The next attorney general must possess the gumption — there is no politer word for it — to override career prosecutors in the Solicitor General’s office who instinctively litigate to win for the federal government rather than to build favorable constitutional precedent. A Supreme Court victory for the Second Amendment lasts generations. A favorable ATF regulation can be reversed by the next administration. The stakes are not comparable.
Whether the next pick is Lee Zeldin, who showed backbone overturning the EPA’s endangerment finding, or someone else entirely, the litmus test is simple: will they control the Solicitor General’s office on Second Amendment strategy? Everything else is secondary.
This article is based on analysis by Mark W. Smith on The Four Boxes Diner. Watch the original video. This does not constitute legal advice.