Gun Owners of America says ‘the next AG cannot be another Bondi’

Ben Sanderson of Gun Owners of America says the Justice Department has become the weak link in what many gun owners expected would be a far more aggressive second-term rollback of federal gun control, and he argues that the next attorney general will have to move quickly if the administration wants to rebuild trust before the midterm elections.

In GOA’s latest Minute Man Moment, Sanderson reacts to Pam Bondi’s resignation by making the group’s position unmistakably clear. In his telling, Bondi may have talked like a supporter of the Second Amendment in public, but behind the scenes, her Justice Department repeatedly stood in the way of the very reforms gun owners were told to expect.

That is the core of his complaint, and he does not dress it up much. Sanderson says gun owners did not back President Trump to preserve a dressed-up version of the status quo at DOJ. They expected a break from the Biden-era approach to firearms policy, and in his view, Bondi failed to deliver it.

GOA Says The Problems Started Before Bondi Took Office

Sanderson argues that Bondi came into the job with warning signs already attached to her record, and GOA says it raised those concerns at the time of her nomination.

He points back to her years as Florida’s attorney general, where she supported several gun restrictions after the Parkland shooting, including red flag laws, raising the age for gun ownership, Florida’s open carry ban, and a bump stock ban. In hindsight, he says, those concerns turned out to be justified rather than overstated.

That history matters to GOA because it frames everything that came after. Sanderson’s position is that Bondi was never likely to become the kind of uncompromising attorney general gun owners wanted, and the months that followed only confirmed that fear.

He says the issue was not that Bondi was hostile to every gun-rights position in every circumstance. The problem, as he tells it, was that when GOA believed the biggest fights were on the line, Bondi’s DOJ was not on the side of sweeping, durable pro-Second Amendment change.

That is a more damaging criticism than simply calling someone imperfect. It suggests she was not merely slow or cautious, but actively resistant in the places where GOA most wanted action.

The Pistol Brace Rule Became A Symbol Of The Larger Frustration

One of Sanderson’s biggest examples is the continued enforcement of the ATF pistol brace rule, which GOA says directly contradicted President Trump’s promise to rip out Biden-era firearm regulations.

In the video, he contrasts that outcome with Trump’s own campaign language, where the president promised that those “Biden disasters” would be torn out quickly, perhaps even on the first day in office. Yet according to Sanderson, Bondi allowed ATF to continue enforcing the brace rule anyway.

For GOA, that was more than a policy disagreement. It became a symbol of what they saw as the larger pattern at DOJ: public rhetoric about supporting gun owners paired with an unwillingness to actually unwind the machinery of federal gun control.

Sanderson also points to DOJ’s continued defense of National Firearms Act registration requirements, even after Congress reduced the NFA tax from $200 to zero. In his telling, that should have been a natural moment for the department to back away, especially with GOA and 15 Republican state attorneys general pushing the issue. Instead, he says, DOJ kept defending the registration scheme in court.

That is the kind of move that clearly irritated GOA, because it makes the department look less like a reform engine and more like a custodian of institutional continuity.

Sanderson Says Other Parts Of The Administration Moved While DOJ Lagged

A major part of Ben Sanderson’s argument is that Bondi’s failures stood out more sharply because other parts of the administration were, in GOA’s view, actually producing wins.

He points to Harmeet Dhillon, who he says has used the Civil Rights Division to challenge unconstitutional state-level gun controls. He highlights the Department of Veterans Affairs restoring rights to more than 270,000 veterans who had been flagged simply because they needed fiduciary help managing benefits. He also notes Treasury rolling back reputational-risk guidance that had pressured banks against serving the firearms industry, the Interior Department expanding hunting access on federal lands, Congress eliminating the old $200 tax on suppressors and short-barreled firearms, and Pete Hegseth announcing what Sanderson describes as a shall-issue style system to allow service members to carry on military bases.

That list is important because Sanderson uses it to make a contrast, not just a complaint. His message is that the second Trump administration has produced real gains for gun owners in several corners of government, which makes DOJ’s performance look even worse by comparison.

In other words, GOA is not saying the whole administration betrayed gun owners. It is saying the opposite: that there were enough genuine pro-gun moves elsewhere to make Bondi’s DOJ look like the outlier.

That is a sharper and probably more politically useful critique, because it separates Trump’s broader record from Bondi’s record in particular.

GOA Says DOJ Protected Itself More Than It Protected Gun Owners

Sanderson’s harshest language comes when he accuses Bondi of choosing the institutional interests of the Justice Department over the constitutional interests of gun owners.

According to him, DOJ under Bondi continued defending unconstitutional laws, slow-walked deregulatory efforts, tried to moot promising lawsuits without real resolution, and reassured gun owners that the best they could expect was a carefully managed version of the existing system. He even mocks DOJ claims that it was the most pro-Second Amendment administration in history, saying those statements became a punchline rather than a rallying cry among Trump’s pro-gun base.

That line likely says a lot about the mood GOA thinks exists among grassroots gun owners right now. Sanderson’s argument is not merely that DOJ came up short. It is that the gap between the administration’s promises and DOJ’s follow-through has become politically costly.

He reinforces that point by highlighting Bondi’s praise for the ATF before Congress. For GOA, that was especially offensive because Trump’s own budget language, Sanderson notes, framed ATF’s recent behavior as an attack on law-abiding gun owners through regulatory fiat. He points to the 2025 budget request’s language about protecting the Second Amendment by cutting funding for ATF offices that had criminalized lawful ownership through things like near-universal background check interpretations, the brace rule, homemade firearms restrictions, and license revocations that hit small dealers.

Then he makes his larger point: if those same priorities are still showing up in later budget documents, why were they not already fixed? His answer is simple. Because Bondi, in his view, did not get it done.

What GOA Wants The Next Attorney General To Do Immediately

Sanderson says the next attorney general needs to take three clear steps right away if the administration wants to repair its relationship with gun owners before the midterms.

First, he says DOJ should announce that the three Biden-era ATF rules are no longer being enforced and direct ATF to stop new prosecutions or administrative actions based on them. For GOA, that would finally align DOJ action with Trump’s campaign promises.

Second, Sanderson wants DOJ to pursue fast settlements in ongoing litigation that include binding commitments to non-enforcement and regulatory reversal. The reason, as he explains it, is that gun owners do not just want symbolic pauses. They want durable victories that cannot easily be reversed by the next attorney general or the next administration.

Third, he says the department must stop defending what GOA sees as plainly unconstitutional gun laws and regulations in court. Sanderson argues that a truly pro-Second Amendment DOJ should not be managing the edge of existing gun control. It should be actively helping dismantle it.

That is the practical center of his video. GOA is not merely venting about Bondi on the way out. It is trying to set the standard for whoever comes next.

Why GOA Thinks The Stakes Are Political As Well As Legal

Sanderson ties all of this directly to the midterms, and that is where the political urgency comes through most clearly.

He says Republicans still need sustained enthusiasm from Second Amendment voters if they want to hold back anti-gun legislation. If an anti-gun House majority takes shape, he argues, the fight becomes defensive rather than reform-minded almost overnight. At that point, the administration would be trying to block new losses rather than deliver new wins.

That is why GOA is pressing now. In Sanderson’s telling, time is short, the tools already exist, and the next attorney general does not need new legislation to start fixing the problem. What DOJ needs, he says, is the will to act.

That may be the cleanest summary of GOA’s position. They are not asking for another attorney general who speaks the language of gun rights but governs through caution, delay, or bureaucratic self-protection. They want someone who will move decisively, stop defending policies they view as unconstitutional, and use executive power in the most openly pro-gun way possible.

And that is why the message from Ben Sanderson is so direct. For GOA, the next attorney general cannot simply be a smoother version of Pam Bondi. If the administration wants to win back frustrated gun owners, it has to choose someone willing to act like the job is about restoring rights, not managing disappointment.