Attorney General Pam Bondi has made a Republican nightmare a reality by having her Department of Justice convince a federal judge to force gun rights organizations to hand over their complete membership lists.
The historic achievement was accomplished with remarkable efficiency by the Trump Administration's top law enforcement official, who successfully argued that compliance required knowing the identities of every person who joined the Second Amendment Foundation, Firearms Policy Coalition, and Louisiana Shooting Association as of November 2020.
"The federal government is creating a registry of gun owners," Gun Owners of America announced, notably omitting its customary closing line about which political party was responsible for the tyranny.
The court order in Reese v. ATF requires verified membership lists within twenty-one days, ensuring the federal government will have comprehensive documentation of citizens who care about the Second Amendment—the exact scenario that has animated Republican fundraising emails since the Carter Administration.
Bondi's Justice Department also convinced the court to limit an injunction against a federal law banning handgun sales to adults under 21, despite a Fifth Circuit ruling declaring the law unconstitutional. Only named plaintiffs and verified organizational members are exempt, requiring groups to disclose membership to the government for young adults to exercise constitutional rights.
"In order for an 18-year-old to avoid having their constitutional rights trounced, they must have been a member of SAF at age 13," said Adam Kraut of the Second Amendment Foundation, successfully describing a Kafka novel that Kafka would have rejected as implausible.
The development comes as Bondi's DOJ also filed Supreme Court briefs opposing gun rights appeals, including one defending the National Firearms Act's registration requirement for short-barreled rifles—the very registration scheme conservatives spent decades calling tyrannical.
"Once again, the Trump Administration has chosen to defend federal gun control instead of the Constitution," the Firearms Policy Coalition said, raising the question of what alternate universe they expected to be living in.
The combined actions represent the successful culmination of every warning issued by conservative talk radio since 1975—except accomplished by a Republican administration that gun rights groups overwhelmingly supported and continue to describe as pro-Second Amendment.
At press time, conservative commentators were preparing to explain how this was brilliant 4D chess.
