Washington, D.C. — Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s extreme, far-right playbook, proposes a series of measures that would make Americans less safe. New Center for American Progress analyses examine two alarming ideas embedded in the 920-page document.
The first column looks at the impact of Project 2025’s plan to eliminate the Federal Law Enforcement Training Centers (FLETC), which provide critical training to 20,000 law enforcement officers every year. “Project 2025’s haphazard destruction of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security would result in fewer well-trained law enforcement officers at every level—local, state, Tribal, and federal—when America’s law enforcement agencies desperately need more of them,” said Tom Moore, senior fellow at CAP and author of the column. “Eliminating FLETC would make Americans, and law enforcement, less safe by denying officers the tools they need to defuse encounters that can turn violent.”
The second column examines Project 2025’s proposals to invalidate state laws on carrying concealed guns, making it so almost anyone can carry firearms in public—from Times Square to the National Mall. The analysis further explains how the corporate gun lobby’s deadly proposals are already being championed by lawmakers and what that means for the safety of Americans. For instance, the Republican Study Committee (RSC) budget calls for eliminating popular public safety policies with bipartisan support, including defunding “red flag” laws, eliminating Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) funding for firearm research, and destroying firearm records used by law enforcement to hold shooters accountable. If enacted, these extreme policies would threaten every individual’s right to feel safe and be free from gun violence. One of the most extreme and dangerous policy proposals in the RSC budget is the Concealed Carry Reciprocity (CCR) Act. CCR would:
- Overrule state laws on carrying concealed guns, making it so almost anyone can carry firearms in public.
- Force states to allow individuals from permitless carry states who may have violent criminal histories and zero gun safety training to carry concealed guns in public.
- Make it harder for law enforcement to prevent violence.
“Project 2025 and other recent far-right proposals offer a disturbing preview of a grim future in which the corporate gun lobby can rewrite U.S. laws with an emphasis on profits over people,” said Nick Wilson, senior director of Gun Violence Prevention at CAP and author of the column. “If Congress enacts concealed carry reciprocity and other dangerous measures to weaken gun laws, research strongly suggests that the United States will experience increases in violent crime, petty disputes escalating into shootings, and unsolved crimes. With the toll of gun violence costing the United States an estimated $557 billion and nearly 50,000 lives each year, we cannot afford to weaken concealed carry requirements.”
Read the columns:
For more information or to speak with an expert, please contact Jasmine Razeghi at [email protected].