In a stark departure from the last administration, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives is taking gun control advocates to task for their sensationalist rhetoric and questionable legal claims. The civilian disarmament crowd has voiced their opposition to many of ATF’s proposed rulemakings aimed at updating, correcting, and streamlining federal firearms regulations. In doing so, the anti-gun forces so mischaracterized the effort that ATF Director Robert Cekada penned a commendable opinion peace setting the record straight.
NRA has commented on nine of the rules most pertinent to gun owners. Where we thought there was room for improvement, NRA let ATF know. In some cases, NRA suggested ATF go back to the drawing board.
Still, it is undeniable that the thrust of ATF’s rulemaking is in keeping with President Donald Trump’s “Executive Order 14206 – Protecting Second Amendment Rights,” which tasked 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 … to protect the Second Amendment rights of all Americans.
Moreover, the rulemakings help to conform federal firearms regulations to the limits of federal statute and of recent federal court rulings.
Gun control advocates and anti-gun politicians aren’t pleased with a federal government interested in staying within the bounds of federal law and with respecting, rather than hindering, fundamental rights.
In the run-up to the regulatory comment period deadline, a group of 22 state attorneys general submitted comments lamenting ATF’s proposed changes. Likewise, anti-gun organizations Giffords, Brady, and Everytown for Gun Safety submitted comments and insisted that the rules would “make Americans less safe.”
Taking to Washington, D.C., media outlet The Hill, ATF Director Robert Cekada wrote a piece setting the record straight. Making clear the need for these rulemakings, the director noted, “much of this package updates rules and procedures that in some cases haven’t been revised in decades. It also aligns agency practice with recent court decisions.”
For instance, gun control advocates have taken exception to a rule aimed at correcting the Biden-Harris administration’s “engaged in the business” rulemaking.
Under federal law, those “engaged in the business” of dealing in firearms are required to be licensed as dealers and conduct transfers pursuant to federal background check requirements. Private citizens not engaged in the business of selling guns are free to buy and sell firearms without these federal requirements.
The Biden-Harris administration enacted a rule that wildly expanded the scope of “engaged in the business” and sought to terrorize law-abiding gun owners out of engaging in lawful firearm transfers without government interference. At the time, gun control advocates heralded the rule as something akin to imposing so-called “universal background checks” by regulatory fiat - a policy Congress has repeatedly rejected.
The Biden-Harris “engaged in the business” rule was later struck down in court.
Cekada explained,
the notion that ATF’s proposal to repeal the Engaged in the Business rule is gutting background checks is also false. In the 2024 rule, the previous administration expanded the definition of who qualifies as a licensed dealer, effectively broadening background checks by administrative regulation…. a federal judge fully vacated the rule nationwide
NRA’s comment was somewhat critical of ATF’s specific approach in this rulemaking. But a desire to undo the damage the Biden-Harris administration perpetrated, and that a federal judge found illegal, is something this ATF and NRA agree on.
Another rule change gun control advocates have mischaracterized is the proposed changes to firearm record retention periods.
Prior to 2022, federal firearms licensees (gun dealers or FFLs) were required to maintain firearm transaction records (Forms 4473) for 20 years following the date of a transfer. If the gun dealer discontinued business, the records subject to the retention requirement were sent to ATF’s National Tracing Center where they were maintained indefinitely. The purported logic of this system is to allow for a firearm discovered at a crime scene to be traced to the retail purchaser. The Biden-Harris administration issued a rule requiring FFLs to retain these records indefinitely and then send them to the NTC for indefinite retention.
ATF is proposing a rule that would reduce the period FFLs and the NTC maintain such records to either 20 or 30 years.
Gun controllers complain that this modest change would hinder crime-solving. The Attorney General of New York’s office huffed, “Currently, records tracking the chain of custody and sale of firearms must be kept indefinitely, which is essential for law enforcement to be able to effectively investigate crimes involving guns.”
First, the records don’t track the chain of custody of a firearm. These records can only be used to show the first retail purchaser of a firearm. This limitation is particularly relevant with firearms used in crime.
In 2019, the DOJ Bureau of Justice Statistics published the results of a survey that asked prison inmates who had possessed a firearm at the time of their offense about the source of their gun. A mere 10.1-percent of all prisoners queried acquired their firearm at a “retail source.” The remaining roughly 90-percent of prisoner firearms were largely acquired from “[o]ff the street/underground market” sources, theft, or a purchase, loan, or gift from a friend or family member -in other words, sources that don’t lend themselves to official recordkeeping.
Moreover, ATF’s own data shows that a small fraction of firearm traces involve retail sales more than 20 years old (never mind nothing is said about their supposed effect on solving cases). Couple this small fraction with the data on how criminals obtain firearms and notion that eliminating these stale records would meaningfully impact violent crime is absurd.
As NRA pointed out in a comment on this rulemaking, the more likely reason gun controllers love these dealer records is that they act as a semi-decentralized registry of law-abiding retail gun purchasers and any firearms they haven’t subsequently transferred.
In his Hill piece, Cekada made clear that the ATF’s rule package “would prevent abusive enforcement practices… and allow ATF to focus attention where it belongs: fighting violent crime.” That’s a worthy goal that all but the most ideologically blinkered gun controllers should be able to get behind. That they don’t shows how blinkered they have actually become.
For its part, NRA agrees that ATF’s recent regulatory reform efforts, while displaying room for improvement, are an important step in the right direction.
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