A headline on the website of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives appeared late in the day on May 21: “ATF Launches New Era of Reform.” According to the accompanying announcement:
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) is ushering in a new chapter—marked by transparency, accountability, and partnership with the firearms industry. This is not the same ATF of the last four years. We are fundamentally changing course with a renewed focus on rebuilding trust with federal firearms licensees (FFLs), gun owners, and the public by prioritizing public safety and collaboration.
Law-abiding Americans have experienced longstanding tension with the federal government’s gun control enforcement arm. An item from the August 1934 edition of the NRA’s American Rifleman recounts concerns raised at a hearing on the National Firearms Act (NFA), with one representative questioning what would happen to law-abiding citizens who failed to register their guns. An assistant attorney general from the U.S. Department of Justice, which was pushing the bill, assured the congressman that there were no plans for “snooping squads going around from house to house to see who does and does not possess arms.” Yet the article noted that less than a month after the NFA was signed into law, an innocent mother of four children was killed in a raid to enforce the act, a hapless bystander in the nation’s escalating war on guns.
Such incidents, unfortunately, have not been confined to the early days of America’s experiments with national gun control. Even short of lives being lost, ATF enforcement has too often involved heavy-handed overreach, including for technical violations of Byzantine regulations that did not implicate public safety or intentional criminality. The modern nadir of this trend occurred during the Biden-Harris administration, with Joe Biden himself portraying the firearms industry as “the enemy,” and assailing it with every means at his disposal.
Elsewhere this week, we report on ATF’s separate announcement inviting businesses impacted by Biden’s infamous “zero tolerance” enforcement policy to reapply for Federal Firearm Licenses under ATF’s revamped guidelines for promoting industry compliance. ATF’s announced reforms, however, go further than simply terminating one ill-begotten program and appear aimed at a broad shift in agency culture.
ATF goes on to recount various remedial steps it has already taken under its “new leadership.” These include:
- Establishing a classifications board and requiring all new firearm classifications to be reviewed and approved by the Office of the Director prior to publication.
- Ensuring that all rules fairly implement congressional statutes rather than create entirely new laws by administrative order.
- Improving response time from the Firearms & Ammunition Technology Division (FATD) to FFL inquiries.
- Reversing a ban on the importation of non-lethal [i.e., Simunitions] training ammunition.
Yet the agency pledges to go further.
Applications to travel interstate with NFA firearms will now be “updat[ed]” into “a simplified notice-based system.”
The agency will additionally be “[p]ublishing an open letter on changes to the Brady Chart.” This likely means more state-issued firearm credentials (including permits to acquire and permits to carry concealed handguns) will qualify as alternatives to NICS background checks.
Uniformity in “dealer inspection and enforcement across regions” is another goal “currently in progress.”
And the agency states it is “[r]eviewing all current regulations to identify and eliminate outdated or unnecessary rules.”
A full list of all the enacted and pending reforms is available at the ATF’s website.
As we note in our other article, the rift between ATF and pro-gun America developed over time, and it will take time to bridge the gap that has opened between them.
But these are encouraging signs that there may be a meaningful course correction at ATF under the stalwart leadership of President Trump.
No upstanding person, least of all law-abiding gun owners and businesses, benefits from firearm-related crime and violence. An ATF that understands and acts on the difference between well-meaning Americans and predatory criminals could contribute to a safer America and one more willing to embrace the range of freedom protected by the Second Amendment.
NRA commends the spirt of the announced reforms. If and when ATF carries through on them, we will gladly give credit in this space where it is due.
As ever, NRA remains committed to promoting the safe and responsible use of firearms and to protecting the right to keep and bear arms. We will work with any partner sincerely committed to those goals.
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