Bondi’s Latest Comments to Supreme Court Infuriate Gun Owners

Gun owners lit up social media this week after the Department of Justice led by Attorney General Pam Bondi urged the Supreme Court not to take a direct shot at the National Firearms Act. As News2A reports, Solicitor General D. John Sauer and Acting Assistant Attorney General Matthew R. Galeotti filed a brief on October 8 asking the justices to deny review in Rush v. United States, a case that squarely challenges the NFA’s registration-and-tax scheme for short-barreled rifles (SBRs). The request was simple and provocative: pass on this case. The reaction was anything but.

DOJ’s Bottom Line: “Don’t Take This Case”

According to News2A, the government told the Court that Rush is a poor vehicle to address the Second Amendment’s coverage of specific arms. Their brief leans on three themes. First, the NFA is constitutional because SBRs are both concealable and potent – traits the DOJ says make them “especially susceptible to criminal misuse.” Second, no court of appeals has ever struck down the NFA. Third, if the justices want to refine the “what counts as an arm” analysis after Heller and Bruen, state bans on AR-15-type rifles would be “better vehicles” than a federal SBR-registration case.

News2A’s Read: A Calculated Stall

News2A frames the filing as part of a pattern: despite rhetoric about defending the Second Amendment, the Bondi DOJ keeps steering the Supreme Court away from NFA merits. The outlet notes that the brief even downplays the importance of the question presented, dismissing it as entangled with “other analytical issues,” including the meaning of “Arms” in the Second Amendment. To many gun owners, that came off as both evasive and revealing – if the government is confident the NFA fits under Bruen, why not let the Court say so?

Jared Yanis Calls Out The “Most 2A-Friendly DOJ”

On his Guns & Gadgets channel, Jared Yanis points to a glaring contradiction: the same DOJ that brands itself “the most pro-2A ever” just told the Supreme Court the NFA is perfectly constitutional – and urged them to ignore Rush’s petition. He underscores that Solicitor General Sauer, widely touted as strongly pro-Second Amendment, nevertheless argued that the Seventh Circuit got it right and that “no further review is warranted.” Yanis’ tone is candid and frustrated: branding is one thing, he says; filings in the nation’s highest court are another.

The Messy Facts Problem

Interestingly, Yanis also agrees with the government on one point: Rush may be the wrong case to take up first. He walks viewers through the government’s summary of the incident – an encounter that led to the discovery of a loaded SBR with three loaded 30-round magazines – and notes that the petitioner pleaded guilty while preserving his right to appeal. In Yanis’ view, a shaky fact pattern (and a less-than-ideal defendant) risks a narrow or even unfavorable Supreme Court ruling. Like it or not, he argues, the Court’s comfort with the plaintiff matters when it crafts constitutional doctrine.

Miller, Again – And Why It Matters

The DOJ leans on United States v. Miller (1939), the old case that rejected a Second Amendment challenge involving an unregistered short-barreled shotgun. As News2A and Yanis both emphasize, the government says Miller forecloses Rush’s facial claim, and even apart from Miller, SBRs aren’t shown to be “commonly used for lawful purposes,” so the NFA stands. Here’s my take: Miller is a relic from the pre-Heller era and famously thin on historical analysis, but it’s still on the books. If the Court wants to update or cabin Miller under Bruen’s test, it needs the right vehicle – and that, more than anything, explains the government’s “not this case” drumbeat.

The Bruen Frame Fight

Yanis highlights another DOJ move: invoking 19th-century taxes and restrictions on Bowie knives, sword canes, and pocket pistols as analogues to the NFA’s registration-and-tax regime. It’s a savvy briefing gambit – flipping Bruen’s “history and tradition” test to claim lineage for the NFA. But it’s also contestable. Bruen demands analogues that are “relevantly similar” in how and why they burden the right. A narrow revenue measure aimed at concealed carry of knives is not obviously equivalent to a federal felony-backed registry for a class of rifles. The fit is debatable; the government wants to make that debate someone else’s, somewhere else’s, and later.

The $0 Tax Paradox

Yanis also flags what he sees as cognitive dissonance: in the same breath that the DOJ paints SBRs as uniquely dangerous, it acknowledges Congress has set the NFA tax for short-barreled shotguns to $0 starting January 1, 2026, and has recently tinkered with NFA taxes more broadly. His point is rhetorical but potent: if these arms are so dangerous, why is the tax effectively vanishing? My view: the tax-versus-registration distinction has always been the NFA’s Achilles’ heel. If taxation is the constitutional fig leaf for a registry, then zeroing out the tax while preserving the registry invites challenges that the scheme no longer rests on Congress’s taxing power at all.

News2A’s Broader Frustration With Strategy

News2A situates this brief within what it calls a continuing pattern from the Bondi DOJ: selectively engaging or ducking Second Amendment fights depending on issue framing. On this one, the government all but says it prefers “AR-15 ban” cases as vehicles to clarify doctrine – cases that keep the NFA off the docket while lower courts churn through Bruen. That is classic institutional minimalism, but it also looks like foot-dragging to gun owners who want the federal registry tested now. News2A’s tone is unmistakable: stop asking the Supreme Court to “wait for better cases” when the constitutional question is sitting in front of you.

A Realpolitik Take On Vehicle Selection

Here’s the sober reality. The justices often decline petitions not because the question is unimportant, but because the record is messy, the posture is facial rather than as-applied, the precedent landscape is unsettled, or a cleaner petition is coming soon. Yanis actually endorses that logic – even while blasting the DOJ’s substance – because he fears a bad decision on bad facts could calcify Miller for another generation. That’s painful to admit for those who want the NFA tested yesterday. But Supreme Court litigators from both sides privately concede the same truth: “vehicle quality” can decide constitutional outcomes.

Where This Leaves The NFA Wars

Even if the Court denies review in Rush, the larger NFA fight is accelerating. News2A has tracked a wave of post-Bruen challenges, some of which directly attack the NFA’s registration regime as unsupported by Congress’s enumerated powers now that various taxes are in flux. Others argue that suppressors and SBRs are “arms in common use” and that blanket NFA controls cannot be squared with Heller/Bruen. Whether Rush is the first domino or not, the dominoes are lined up. The DOJ can delay which one falls first; it cannot prevent the Court from engaging forever.

Politics, Optics, And Trust

For many gun owners, the sting isn’t just the legal position – it’s the optics. News2A notes the DOJ’s public claims of defending the Second Amendment, while Yanis points out that, when push came to shove, the same Department told the Supreme Court the NFA is rock-solid and the Seventh Circuit got it right. You can admire careful lawyering and still ask for consistency. If the Department truly believes Bruen means what it says, it should stop acting like the NFA is beyond constitutional scrutiny and start telling the Court which questions it is ready to answer on the merits.

What Happens Next

Procedurally, the ball is now in the justices’ court: grant or deny certiorari. If they deny, the lower court’s decision stands and the NFA’s SBR provisions remain intact – for now. If they grant, briefing would roll into 2026 and the stakes would skyrocket. Yanis warns that the identity of the petitioner could color how far the Court is willing to go. That’s a fair caution. But a grant would also finally force a head-on reconciliation between Miller’s anemic history and Bruen’s robust test – a reckoning that is overdue.

Bottom Line

News2A’s reporting and Jared Yanis’ commentary converge on a single, uncomfortable point: the Bondi DOJ says the right things in press releases, then tells the Supreme Court to keep its hands off the NFA. Maybe Rush is a less-than-ideal vehicle. Maybe the justices will wait for a cleaner case. But the message gun owners heard was simpler: “Not now, not this way.” If the Department truly wants to be the “most 2A-friendly DOJ,” it can start by picking a vehicle it does support and inviting the Court to finally apply Bruen to the NFA – on the merits, not in the margins.

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