April 29 was a big day for Second Amendment supporters in Washington, D.C., as ATF announced the confirmation of a new director, Robert Cekada, and rolled out perhaps the biggest one-day regulatory overhaul in the agency’s history. The event was triggered by President Trump’s Feb. 7, 2025, Executive Order Protecting Second Amendment Rights, which required the U.S. attorney general to:
examine all orders, regulations, guidance, plans, international agreements, and other actions of executive departments and agencies (agencies) to assess any ongoing infringements of the Second Amendment rights of our citizens, and present a proposed plan of action to the President, through the Domestic Policy Advisor, to protect the Second Amendment rights of all Americans.
To aid in this process, NRA-ILA on Feb. 28, 2025, had submitted a memorandum to the Attorney General’s Office, with its own suggestions for implementing the President’s directive. Wednesday’s event made clear that current senior ATF leadership are now committed to carrying forward President Trump’s vision of treating the Second Amendment as the fundamental civil right members of the NRA have always known it to be.
President Trump’s Executive Order covered categories that included Presidential and agencies’ actions; rules promulgated by the Department of Justice (DOJ) and ATF; ATF’s so-called “enhanced regulatory enforcement policy;” work product issued by the Biden-Harris White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention; litigation positions taken by the United States that could affect Second Amendment rights; agencies’ classification of firearms and ammunition; and the processing of applications to make, manufacture, or export firearms.
NRA-ILA’s memo outlined some 50 actions the Executive Branch could take under its own authority to correct infringements under each of these categories. Even before Wednesday, the Trump Administration has acted consistently with at least half of these suggestions. The reforms announced on April 29 continued this momentum by tackling some higher order concerns that required a formal rulemaking process.
The official language of these measures has yet to be published in the Federal Register, as the new ATF director’s commission is still making its way through the bureaucratic process, and his signature as director is required on each rulemaking to make it official. Based on summaries posted to ATF’s website, however, the changes appear to make good on ATF’s promise of a “new era of reform,” including respect for the Second Amendment, respect for law-abiding gun owners, partnership with the lawful firearms industry, and a refocusing of ATF’s mission and resources on fighting violent crime.
One of the most welcomed changes, and one squarely recommended in NRA-ILA’s memo, is repeal of the Biden era rule Factoring Criteria for Firearms With Attached “Stabilizing Braces.” The rule, as NRA-ILA’s memo put it, was “punitive, illegal, unconstitutional, and unworkable.” It seems it has now been resigned to the dustbin of history, where it belongs.
Another Biden era rule undergoing substantial repeal is Definition of “Engaged in the Business” as a Dealer in Firearms, which represented the Biden-Harris administration’s attempt to usher in “universal background checks” by administrative fiat. According to ATF’s summary, the revised rule will retain the statutory definition of “engaged in the business,” while rescinding provisions the former rule added that exceeded this language. This will hopefully include the unauthorized “presumptions” that sought to stretch the bounds of the term “engaged in the business” beyond anything recognizable in the statutory terminology.
The Biden administration had also required Federal Firearm Licensees (FFLs) to retain their business records for as long as they operated under the FFL, whereas previous standards only required, at most, 20 years of record retention. ATF is now proposing to reinstate a retention period of 20 or 30 years, and not just for FFL business records, but for the out-of-business-records required to be maintained by at the ATF’s National Tracing Center. These latter records represent an enormous source of information about privately owned guns in America, in obvious tension with federal laws prohibiting registries of ordinary firearms and their owners.
ATF’s proposed changes would reduce burdens on FFLs and more appropriately balance the imperative to retain a limited amount of out-of-business records for legitimate traces linked to criminal investigations with gun owner privacy. As NRA-ILA has repeatedly noted, a trace of a gun sale occurring more than 20 years ago is unlikely to provide much actionable information for solving a current firearm-related crime.
Yet another proposed rule in ATF’s announcement concerns the Firearms Owners’ Protection Act’s (FOPA’s) interstate transport protections. These statutory provisions protect a traveler who is transporting an unloaded, inaccessible firearm when possession of that firearm is legal in the jurisdictions on both ends of the trip. According to ATF’s summary: “The proposed rule formally recognizes that common, reasonably necessary activities during travel – including overnight stops, vehicle maintenance, refueling, emergency stops, and medical treatments – are considered as a necessary part of ‘transport,’ and are therefore covered” under FOPA’s protections. These changes could be a huge boon to travelers traversing rabidly anti-gun jurisdictions in the Northeast, including New Jersey and New York, where arrests have been common for activities safeguarded under a proper interpretation of FOPA.
An additional proposed rule would create a definition of “willfully” in the context of violations occurring under the Gun Control Act of 1968, as amended. It was this term that the Biden era ATF manipulated to perpetrate its “zero tolerance” regime of FFL inspections, in which licenses were revoked over harmless, inadvertent errors. Having a codified definition of “willfully” in ATF rules could prevent such mischief in the future.
NRA-ILA has also recently been reporting on the correction of a long-running outrage at the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), under which veterans and other VA beneficiaries have been reported as prohibited “mental defectives” to the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System, merely for having fiduciaries appointed to help them manage their VA benefits. ATF is proposing a rule to “clarify that a person receiving assistance in only one functional area (such as financial management) would not, on that basis alone, be considered prohibited under this definition.” This will, going forward, protect not just VA beneficiaries, but the beneficiaries of any governmental aid program that uses a similar system for designating fiduciaries.
These are just a few of the many changes that ATF is enacting or proposing. A full list of summaries is available on ATF’s website. Other changes are aimed, for example, at streamlining requirements related to lawful firearms commerce, meaning less hassle, expense, and red tape for gun buyers and sellers alike.
These latest moves add to the dozens of other pro-gun actions taken by the Trump Administration, in line with the suggestions in NRA-ILA’s memo. We have reported on various highlights, including here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.
When you add it up, no modern presidential administration, and perhaps no presidential administration in history, has been as affirmatively pro-gun as the Trump Administration.
That said, NRA-ILA’s work to realize the full potential of President Trump’s Executive Order is far from done. We will keep you informed as formal rulemaking language is published and continue providing formal comments and other input to ensure the final products are as fine-tuned and beneficial as possible. Stay tuned to this page for further updates!
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