Rep. Jamie Raskin’s claim that Donald Trump was merely “projecting” when he accused the Biden Justice Department of political weaponization lands with a thud for anyone who has watched the last four years of selective enforcement. The same DOJ that fast-tracked cases against Trump while slow-walking or burying investigations into Hunter Biden’s foreign dealings and classified-document handling now finds itself accused of impartiality by the very lawmakers who cheered every raid and indictment. For the 2A community, the irony is especially sharp: while the administration pursued lawfare against its chief political rival, it simultaneously green-lit rules that redefined pistol braces, cracked down on solvent-trap kits, and pushed the ATF’s “engaged in the business” rule that turned private sellers into presumptive felons overnight.
The deeper problem is structural. When the nation’s premier law-enforcement agency is perceived—correctly or not—as an arm of one political party, every future administration inherits both the precedent and the temptation to settle scores. Gun owners have already felt the downstream effects: FFLs facing surprise inspections timed to election cycles, form 4473 “errors” treated as criminal referrals rather than paperwork mistakes, and a steady drip of regulatory letters that function as de-facto bans. If the public concludes the DOJ can be aimed like a political weapon, support for further funding, expanded surveillance powers, or new red-flag schemes collapses, leaving lawful gun owners more exposed to whatever enforcement culture the next administration chooses to adopt.
Ultimately, Raskin’s talking point underscores why institutional trust matters more than partisan score-settling. A DOJ viewed as neutral protects the Second Amendment by ensuring that rules are applied evenly rather than invented on the fly to target disfavored groups. When that perception fractures, the 2A community doesn’t get safer—it simply learns that today’s regulatory hammer can become tomorrow’s precedent for the other side, and the only real safeguard is restoring the norm that federal law enforcement stays out of electoral politics altogether.
