Last week, NRA filed its first round of comments in response to ATF’s comprehensive regulatory overhaul. NRA’s latest input shows the Association’s efforts coming full circle.
First, NRA weighed in with voluminous suggestions to the U.S. Attorney General’s Office on implementing President Trump’s Feb. 7, 2025, Executive Order Protecting Second Amendment Rights. A number of those suggestions were taken up by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) in rulemakings announced in April. Now, NRA is submitting further feedback on ATF’s proposals to ensure the final products are as finely tuned as possible.
We urge other stakeholders affected by the broad range of issues tackled in these rulemakings to do so as well. You don’t have to be a lawyer or lobbyist to provide real-world information to ATF on your own experiences and activities to help inform their decision-making.
NRA’s initial comments came in response to proposals entitled Revising Definitions of “Adjudicated as a Mental Defective” and “Committed to a Mental Institution;” Defining “Willfully” for Firearms Violations; and Clarifying Exceptions to the Brady Act Background Check Requirement. Despite the drab bureaucratic titles, each effort implicates matters of critical importance to ordinary gun owners and firearm-related businesses.
The first rulemaking in the above list tackles the disgraceful practice of the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) in reporting to the FBI’s gun ban database veterans and their dependents who receive benefits and who have had a fiduciary appointed to help them manage their funds. This regime dates back to the Bill Clinton administration, when the infamously anti-gun president was trying to jam as many records as possible into the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS), then newly created in response to the so-called Brady Bill.
NICS is only supposed to flag records that demonstrate a person is prohibited from acquiring or possessing firearms under federal or state law. But by stretching the language of the underlying statutes, the Clinton and other anti-gun administrations grew the system well beyond the bounds that Congress intended and enacted.
The VA’s regime was one of the most shameful examples. It purported to label beneficiaries who were declared financially “incompetent” to manage their VA funds as prohibited “mental defectives.” Yet, as NRA’s comment exhaustively explains, that statutory term had nothing to do with the findings the VA was required to make to appoint a fiduciary. The VA’s process for fiduciary appointment also lacked the necessary pre-deprivation due process and determinations of dangerousness the U.S. Supreme Court has since identified as prerequisites for the suspension of Second Amendment rights.
Fortunately, ATF’s rulemaking recognizes all this and seeks to make changes to its regulatory definitions that would prohibit VA from resurrecting its regime, which is currently paused because of a congressional appropriations rider defunding the reporting. NRA’s comment supports the spirit and intent of the rulemaking, while offering further research to clarify the relevant statutory terms and suggestions for ensuring the final rule is compliant with the applicable statutes, as well as with the Second Amendment.
Veterans affected by the VA’s prior regime, veterans’ support organizations and affinity groups, mental health advocacy organizations, and even VA whistleblowers who dealt with the prior regime are all encouraged to comment on ATF’s proposal. Doing so will ensure the record contains relevant information about why the rule is necessary and why it does not present the supposed public safety concerns gun control proponents are desperate to have the public believe it does. By exposing the lie behind this illegal and unconstitutional scheme, we can best ensure it is never brought back.
The rulemaking defining “willfully” for purposes of the Gun Control Act of 1968, as amended (GCA), goes right to the heart of the Biden-Harris administration’s reign of terror over Federal Firearms Licensees (FFLs) via its program of “zero tolerance” FFL inspections. This program made it almost impossible for FFLs to do their jobs by making every inadvertent paperwork error a possible basis for the permanent loss of their licenses to do business.
NRA’s comment explains how it was exactly this sort of enforcement overreach under the original language of the GCA that led a bipartisan Congress to pass and President Ronald Reagan to sign the Firearm Owners Protection Act of 1986 (FOPA). One of FOPA’s most important reforms was to create an enhanced showing of mens rea (guilty mind) in order for the government to revoke an FFL or convict an FFL holder of a crime because of an alleged violation of one or more of the GCA’s highly technical requirements. Under FOPA, it wasn’t enough that an FFL was careless or made an honest or inadvertent mistake. Instead, the government had to prove in each case the person actually intended to engage in conduct the person knew to be illegal.
Unfortunately, if predictably, anti-gun elements within the government succeeded in eroding the protections this reform was meant to provide. ATF created broad presumptions about when “willful” violations occurred. Under “zero tolerance,” for example, this included using an FFL’s prior history of pristine compliance as “evidence” the business understood the rules, so that any subsequent violation was assumed to have been committed intentionally.
At the urging of NRA and others, ATF formally abandoned “zero tolerance” under President Trump and returned to case-by-case determinations under the correct standard. ATF’s rulemaking, however, would provide a bulwark against a future anti-gun administration trying to resurrect similar abuses. NRA’s comment expresses approval of ATF’s new approach and suggests further refinements to close potential loopholes in its application.
NRA urges FFLs that were affected by “zero tolerance” or other unreasonable enforcement owing to harmless mistakes to submit comments in support of ATF’s corrective rulemaking. The more ATF knows about the abuses that occurred, the better the final rule should be.
The final comment in NRA’s initial batch of submissions concerned the standards by which ATF determines which state firearm-related permits or licenses allow for the purchase of a firearm from an FFL without the necessity of completing a NICS check. Congress enacted this exception to reward states that issued permits requiring their own background checks to screen out prohibited persons. Thus, for example, a concealed carry licensee who qualified for that credential after a NICS check could remain eligible to acquire guns from FFLs for up to five years without having to repeat the check.
Prior to the Trump administration, however, this exception was subject to vague, shifting, and inconsistent administration by ATF. A state might pass a law to revise its permitting process, in hopes of qualifying for the exception, only to discover the goalposts had been moved. Particularly under “zero tolerance,” moreover, an FFL that sold a firearm under the NICS exemption could risk having its license revoked if ATF later determined the exception was invalid.
ATF’s current rulemaking would establish clearer, objective, nationwide standards that would hopefully promote consistent application of the NICS exemption across all ATF enforcement regions. NRA’s comment expresses enthusiastic support of the proposal. Those with experience using the NICS exemption, including those caught up in the prior more capricious era of enforcement, are encouraged to comment.
The easiest way to comment is through the online portal at www.regulations.gov. Search using the title of the rulemaking at the top of the landing page. Once you find the correct entry, hit the blue bar that says “COMMENT” and either type your message directly into the specified field or upload a separate document containing your remarks. Pay close attention to the deadline for comments, most of which must be submitted by either Aug. 4 or 6, 2026.
As of this writing, NRA’s comments are still being processed and are not yet accessible on regulations.gov. They should, however, be visible within a few days.
The ability to comment on agency rulemakings is one of the most important mechanisms U.S. citizens have to ensure their voices are heard in the formulation of regulations that directly affect their lives. NRA is therefore pleased to participate in one of the most significant reform efforts in firearms regulations since the GCA was passed in 1968.
The more gun owners who participate in this historic effort, the better the outcome will be for the Second Amendment. Let your voice be heard today!
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