Freedom Index
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Patrick G. Eddington
At the National Rifle Association’s (NRA) May 2024 convention, then-presidential candidate Donald Trump told those assembled, “No one will lay a finger on your firearms.”
In the wake of the tragic mass shooting at the Annunciation Catholic Church in Minneapolis in August 2025, the regime’s tone changed, and in an alarming way for every law-abiding American gun owner. As CNN reported at the time:
In the wake of the Minneapolis Catholic church shooting, senior Justice Department officials are weighing proposals to limit transgender people’s right to possess firearms, according to two officials familiar with the internal discussions.
This week, while testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee, FBI Director Kash Patel threw more rhetorical gasoline on the fire by saying this in response to a question about a revival of the Clinton-era “assault weapons ban”:
“I think there are instances on this legislation that could prevent future attacks, but I’m not going to weigh into the creation of legislation.
Fact: the most high-profile political assassination in decades—the September 10, 2025, murder of right-wing political activist Charlie Kirk—was accomplished not with an AR-15 but with a German-manufactured Mauser M98 30.06 bolt-action rifle.
Fact: Every year, most gun-related homicides involve the use of semi-automatic pistols. As a Pew analysis from earlier this year noted:
In 2023, the most recent year for which the FBI has published data, handguns were involved in 53% of the 13,529 U.S. gun murders and non-negligent manslaughters for which data is available. Rifles – the category that includes guns sometimes referred to as “assault weapons” —were involved in 4% of firearm murders. Shotguns were involved in 1%. The remainder of gun homicides and non-negligent manslaughters (42%) involved other kinds of firearms or those classified as “type not stated.”
Between August 2024 and August 2025, I saved links to every single press release coming out of the Justice Department that involved felons in possession of firearms, and at some point, I plan to do a separate write-up on my findings. What I can say in brief is this: the overwhelming number of press releases about those cases involved multi-time felons using semiautomatic pistols to commit murder and mayhem, not AR-15s or any other kind of modern sporting rifle.
What I also know is this: law-abiding gun owners now have ample grounds to question whether Trump and his key law enforcement officials are actually committed to upholding Americans’ Second Amendment rights.
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