As Washington Gun Law President and legal expert William Kirk points out, Leider is “well on record as a public author of being a staunch, staunch supporter of the Second Amendment.”
Robert Leider, Associate Professor at Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University, has taken over as the ATF’s Assistant Director and Chief Counsel.
This comes less than a month after the Trump administration issued walking papers to Pamela Hicks and showed her the door. The timing of the move couldn’t be better, as gun owners are losing patience with the process while watching other issues precede the Second Amendment and holdover idiots like U.S. Attorney Michael Simpson stating that suppressors fall outside the constitutional right to bear arms.
Notably, Attorney General Pam Bondi has become somewhat of a polarizing figure, as her history on gun rights is not sterling, and she is past due with her report regarding the President’s executive order on the Second Amendment. AG Bondi and President Trump, however, have indicated a new leaf on the subject, and regardless of the snags we’ve experienced, it is tempting to see appointments like Kash Patel to ATF Director and hires like Robert Leider as incremental steps in the right direction.
So, who is Rober Leider, and why should his new position within the ATF inspire a glimmer of hope for gun owners? Leider has earned his fair share of education with an undergraduate degree from George Washington University, a PhD from Georgetown, his J.D. from Yale, and he has clerked for the United States Supreme Court and the Court of Appeals. While this sounds impressive, it may also sound like he is well-versed in swamp culture, so we must examine his personal history to answer this question.
By Darwin Nercesian
