DOJ Becomes Blue States' Gun Confiscation Arm

The DOJ struck a deal Thursday to withhold rapid-fire trigger switches from residents of Maryland, Illinois, Minnesota, Rhode Island, and the District of Columbia. The price of that deal? Those states agreed to drop a lawsuit they had filed to block the returns.

Read that again slowly. Five Democrat-run states *sued* to stop the federal government from giving Americans their property back — and the DOJ folded.

**That is not a settlement. That is a surrender.**

These trigger switches — depending on the device, sometimes called forced reset triggers or binary triggers — became a federal flashpoint after the ATF spent years losing in court over how to classify them. Judges repeatedly slapped the ATF down for overreach. The legal outcome was clear: the feds had no business keeping these devices.

So the DOJ found a backdoor.

Rather than return seized property to all owners equally, federal officials carved out a geographic exception — punishing gun owners whose only crime was living under an anti-gun governor. No federal law bans these devices for civilians. That is the *entire* reason courts were fighting over them in the first place. This deal exploits a legal gray zone to hand blue-state gun-grabbers a victory they could not win on the merits.

**If you live in a free state, you get your property back. If you live in a Democrat-run state, you get a settlement agreement.**

That is not equal justice under law. That is geography-based rights stripping — with a federal signature on it.

Here is what makes this a blueprint, not just a one-off loss: Maryland, Illinois, Minnesota, Rhode Island, and D.C. just proved that blue-state attorneys general can strong-arm the DOJ into serving as their personal confiscation deputies. If it works once, it works again. Different devices. Different states. Same playbook.

If the federal government seizes your property and a court or settlement compels its return, your governor has zero legitimate say in whether you get it back. Or at least, that's how it *should* work in a country with equal protection under the law.

Apparently, that country is not the one we woke up in Thursday.

**Bottom line:** Contact your U.S. Senators now and demand they press Acting AG Todd Blanche to explain why the DOJ is doing the dirty work of state gun-grabbers. Your Second Amendment rights do not stop at the state line — and neither should your outrage. Watch this space: the same coalition of blue-state AGs will be back, and next time they will be targeting something you own.