Key Policies

• Uphold strict constitutional protections: Defend the Second Amendment exactly as written, without reinterpretation or expansion of federal authority.
• Repeal unconstitutional laws: Roll back the National Firearms Act and 1960s-era gun-control statutes that violate constitutional limits.
• End backdoor regulation: Stop federal agencies from imposing firearm restrictions through rulemaking, reclassification, or administrative actions.
• Protect lawful gun owners: Prevent selective prosecution and punitive enforcement against responsible, law-abiding citizens.
• Strengthen lawful carry and reciprocity: Establish clear, uniform protections for lawful carry and transport across all jurisdictions.
• Remove outdated federal restrictions: Eliminate obsolete classifications and regulatory barriers that hinder modern, lawful firearm ownership.
• Fix mental-health standards without infringing rights: Reevaluate why and how the system defines mental incapacity to ensure dangerous individuals are identified constitutionally — not through new federal powers.
• Return to constitutional first principles: Ensure all federal firearm policy aligns with individual liberty, limited government, and the Constitution’s original intent.

Thomas’ Vision — Restoring the Second Amendment

Washington has treated the Second Amendment like a negotiable privilege instead of a constitutional guarantee. In the same vein as the first Pirate's movie when Barbarossa refrs to the Code as "Guidelines", they have demonstrated contempt for the rule of law and the Constitution. For decades, Congress and federal agencies have stacked regulations, classifications, fees, and arbitrary restrictions on top of one another — almost all of which fall on the people who already follow the law. Meanwhile, the federal government ignores the real drivers of violence and leaves communities without meaningful support.

Thomas believes this approach is backwards, unconstitutional, and fundamentally unfair.

Restore the Constitution’s Plain Meaning

The Second Amendment does not leave room for reinterpretation or federal overreach. Thomas will work to roll back laws that extend far beyond the Constitution’s text and return firearm policy to its original, lawful boundaries.

Stand With Law-Abiding Citizens

Responsible gun owners should never be treated like criminals for exercising a constitutional right. Thomas will fight policies and enforcement practices that punish honest Americans instead of targeting violent offenders.

Fix What Actually Impacts Safety

Restricting constitutional rights has never solved the underlying problems. Thomas will push for reforms that address the real issues surrounding violence and instability:

• A broken mental-health system
• Inconsistent enforcement against actual criminals
• Fragmented or inaccessible crisis-intervention resources
• Poor coordination across agencies and providers

Mass violence in the United States sharply increased after the nationwide shutdown of mental-health institutions in the late 20th century. Those facilities are outlawed today and are not an acceptable model — but the country never replaced them with a functional, constitutional framework that identifies individuals who truly meet the threshold of incapacity or danger.

Compounding the issue, current firearm laws often rely on self-reported mental-health history, meaning individuals can simply lie about their condition with no effective, constitutional mechanism for determining whether they legally meet the criteria for mental incapacity.

This is a structural failure — not an excuse for new federal firearm controls.

Thomas believes Congress must revisit the “why” and the “how” behind mental-health standards to understand:

• Why current definitions fail to identify legitimately dangerous individuals
• How to create objective, constitutional criteria that work without expanding federal power
• How to ensure mental-health determinations cannot be abused, politicized, or weaponized

The goal is not to revive institutions or expand background checks.
The goal is to repair a broken legal framework so it can protect communities from genuinely dangerous individuals while fully preserving the constitutional rights of functional, everyday Americans.

End Backdoor Gun Control

When agencies use rulemaking, reclassification, or administrative action to impose new restrictions without Congress, they violate the Constitution and the separation of powers. Thomas will work to put an end to regulation-by-decree.

Examples:

1. ATF Bump Stock Reclassification (2018)

• Congress did not pass a law banning bump stocks.
• The ATF unilaterally reclassified them as “machine guns” under the 1934 NFA — even though bump stocks do not alter the mechanical firing mechanism.
• This reversed a decade of prior ATF rulings that had said the opposite.
• The Supreme Court struck this down in 2024 (Garland v. Cargill), calling it an unlawful expansion of agency power.
• This is a textbook example of regulation without legislation.

2. ATF Pistol Brace Rule (2023)

• For years, the ATF repeatedly issued public letters stating that pistol braces were legal and did not convert a pistol into an NFA-regulated SBR.
• With no act of Congress, the ATF suddenly reversed course and declared that millions of braced pistols were now felonies unless registered under the NFA.
• Overnight, tens of millions of lawful owners were put at risk of federal charges.
• Multiple courts blocked the rule, stating that ATF cannot rewrite law.
• This is another example of policy created from a bureaucratic reinterpretation.

3. “Ghost Gun” Parts Rule / Frame & Receiver Redefinition (2022)

• Federal law defines a firearm’s “frame or receiver.”
• ATF issued a rule redefining unfinished parts as “firearms” — even if they cannot fire, have never fired, and require machining.
• This attempted to regulate raw materials and parts kits Congress never included in statutory language.
• This is an example of agencies expanding definitions beyond what the law actually says.

4. Operation Choke Point (2013–2017)

• Without Congress, federal regulators pressured banks to deny services to entire categories of legal businesses, including gun stores.
• It was not a law — it was an informal enforcement campaign.
• Both parties later condemned it as improper and outside regulatory authority.
• This is an example of using financial regulation to indirectly accomplish gun control via pressure, not legislation.

5. Proposed “Redefinition” of Semi-Autos as NFA Items (Multiple Drafts)

• ATF internal memos and draft rulemaking discussions (released via FOIA) have shown attempts to treat common semi-auto firearms as “readily convertible” to NFA status.
• These proposals never went through, but demonstrate the continuing effort by agencies to push boundaries without new laws from Congress.

A Government That Respects Rights Instead of Weakening Them

Thomas’ vision is straightforward:

• If a law exceeds federal constitutional authority, repeal it.
• If a regulation goes beyond congressional intent, clarify & dismantle it.
• If a citizen is law-abiding, protect their rights — without exception.
• Protect all citizens from harm by ensuring the actual root of the problem is addressed.
• If mental-health failures are driving violence, fix the mental healthcare system; not the Constitution.
• And if the Second Amendment says the right shall not be infringed, Congress must act accordingly.