Ed Post: Thoughts and Prayers? How Trump and the GOP Undermine School Shooting Protections
Issues
This excerpt is from a piece that originally ran on September 3, 2025 on Frazzled About Education and on September 4, 2025 in Ed Post.
For example, Trump-nominated judges on the Ninth Circuit recently struck down California’s law limiting individuals to one gun purchase per month, dismissing it as an unconstitutional burden under the new Bruen framework.
The Alliance for Justice reports multiple Trump judges eager to strike down even long-accepted measures, such as prohibitions on 18-to 20-year-olds carrying handguns or requirements that guns have serial numbers.
In his second term, Trump has only accelerated this legal offensive. Almost immediately, his Justice Department withdrew government defense of a new federal rule regulating “pistol braces” – devices that can turn pistols into short-barreled rifles (a favorite of mass shooters). In July 2025, Trump’s DOJ abruptly dropped an appeal and allowed the court-ordered vacating of ATF’s pistol brace ban, effectively legalizing these concealable pseudo-rifles without background checks. Gun lobby groups celebrated as a flood of dangerous accessories hit the market that law enforcement had tried to regulate.