Energy Secretary Chris Wright’s blunt admission that electricity prices are still climbing—despite his earlier hope that the upward trend would “soon” stop—lays bare the long-term damage done by the Biden administration’s permitting regime. By choking off new natural-gas pipelines, LNG export terminals, and domestic mining projects with endless environmental reviews, the previous White House effectively capped supply while demand from data centers, EVs, and reshored manufacturing kept rising. The result is a textbook supply squeeze: utilities are forced to pay top dollar for scarce fuel or to keep aging coal plants on life support, and those costs flow straight to the kitchen-table bill.

For the firearms community the connection is more than academic. Higher utility rates eat into the discretionary income that funds range fees, match entries, and the next optics or suppressor purchase; they also raise the operating costs of every indoor range, gunsmith shop, and small manufacturer that relies on affordable, reliable power. Meanwhile, the same regulatory mindset that throttled energy infrastructure is mirrored in ATF rule-makings that treat paperwork delays as a feature rather than a bug. Both trends share a common remedy: streamlined permitting, predictable timelines, and an administration willing to treat American energy—and American rights—as strategic assets rather than bargaining chips.