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Trump Administration ‘Ending the Weaponization’ Against Gun Owners in 34 Rules

May 1, 2026/in Courts & Law, Elections, Gun Rights, Hot Topics, News, Regulation, Social Issues, The Truth/by The Daily Signal

The Trump administration is proposing almost three dozen new rules to scale back gun regulations that proliferated during the Biden administration.

The 34 rules placed in the Federal Register on Wednesday included reversing a 2024 Biden administration rule that attempted to force firearms dealers to run background checks on buyers at gun shows. Gun control advocates called this the “gun show loophole.”

Another change ends the 2023 Biden administration rule that restricted pistol braces. Pistol braces are attachments that allow a person holding a pistol to keep the weapon against their shoulder. The Biden administration justified the regulation by claiming the attachment turned the pistol into a barreled rifle that is subject to stronger regulation.

Earlier this week, the Senate confirmed Robert Cekada as director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

“ATF’s mission is to protect public safety and enforce the law—and these reforms reflect our commitment to doing that through regulations that are clear, legally sound, and narrowly tailored to that purpose,” Cekada said in a statement. “Our enforcement focus from here on out is on willful violators and criminal actors, not inadvertent compliance issues by responsible owners and licensees.”

The focus of the proposed rules, now open for public comment, is to scale back enforcement against licensed gun dealers and gun owners who make paperwork errors, and to emphasize a focus on criminals.

The Gun Owners of America, a pro–Second Amendment group, had filed several lawsuits against the federal government opposing regulations, but “that all went away with this new ATF director,” Gun Owners of America national spokesman Stephen Willeford said.

The top priorities for the Gun Owners of America were doing away with the pistol brace regulation and reversing the Biden rule that categorized anyone selling a firearm as being in the business of selling firearms.

But, he said, the changes have come later than promised, which he blamed on former Attorney General Pam Bondi, a former Florida attorney general.

“The Trump administration told us in the first week they would undo all of the Biden administration rulings in the first week, not laws but rulings,” Willeford, co-author of “A Town Called Sutherland Springs: Faith and Heroism Through Tragedyopens in a new tab,” told the Daily Signal. “We were worried when Pam Bondi became attorney general. She was never pro-2A in Florida.”

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche asserted the Trump administration is taking a different path than the prior administration.

“The Second Amendment is not a second-class right,” Blanche saidopens in a new tab in a statement. “This Department of Justice is ending the weaponization of federal authority against law-abiding gun owners. We will continue to vigorously defend their rights as the Constitution demands.”

The rules include repealing existing regulations, modernizing firearms regulations, reducing burdens on gun owners and gun dealers, and providing legal clarifications.

The changes are a response to President Donald Trump’s Executive Order 14206, “Protecting Second Amendment Rights,” signed in February 2025, geared at ending “the federal government’s violation of Americans’ fundamental Second Amendment right to protect themselves, their families, and their freedoms.”

Gun control advocates are upset with the changes. Nick Wilson, senior director of public safety at the Center for American Progress, took aim at scrapping the gun show regulation.

“The Trump administration is once again prioritizing the interests of the gun industry over the safety of American families,” Wilson said in a statement Thursday. “The new proposed rule guts a key provision of the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act of 2022—essentially getting rid of near-universal background checks. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche attempted to spin this as ‘the most comprehensive regulatory reform package in the history’ of ATF, but this is really an irresponsible effort to strip away lifesaving protections in order to maximize gun industry profits.”

AUTHOR

Fred Lucas

Whistleblowers Allege ATF Is Drafting Rule That Could Effectively Ban Private Firearm Sales

February 1, 2024/in Courts & Law, Elections, Gun Rights, Hot Topics, News, Policy, Politics, Regulation, Waste, Fraud and Abuse/by The Daily Caller

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) is working on a rule that could effectively ban the sale of firearms between private individuals, agency whistleblowers told a watchdog group.

Empower Oversight, a nonpartisan watchdog representing one of the Hunter Biden Internal Revenue Service whistleblowers, says that ATF whistleblowers informed it of a 1,300-page document being drafted by the agency that would require background checks for all firearm sales, including those between two private individuals. The new rule would “effectively ban private sales of firearms from one citizen to another,” according to a press release from Empower Oversight.

Empower Oversight submitted a records request to the Department of Justice seeking more information about the rule.

The rule would “violate the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution,” according to Empower Oversight President Tristan Leavitt. Leavitt also said the rule would “circumvent the separation of powers in the Constitution.”

Empower Oversight points out that the ATF’s rule could redefine individuals who occasionally sell guns as being “engaged in the business of dealing in firearms,” thus requiring them to acquire a Federal Firearms Licensee and run background checks on whoever they’re selling to.

In the Firearms Owners Protection Act of 1986, Congress established that the term “engaged in the business” of selling guns “shall not include a person who makes occasional sales, exchanges, or purchases of firearms for the enhancement of a personal collection or for a hobby.”

Leavitt pointed out that the courts would likely strike down the rule and argued that it is likely a ploy to fire up the Democratic base during an election year.

Private background checks are popular with voters, according to polling data.

A poll conducted by Morning Consult and Politico in 2022 found that 81% of registered voters supported background checks at gun shows and for private transfers.

Support for background checks is lower among Republicans than among Democrats. A 2021 Morning Consult and Politico poll found that 77% of Democrats supported background checks for all gun purchases, compared to just 53% of Republicans.

While Americans are open to background checks, banning certain kinds of firearms is unpopular among Americans.

Only 27% of Americans supported banning handgun ownership as of October 2023, according to Gallup. An April 2023 poll conducted by Monmouth University found that more Americans opposed an “assault weapons” ban than supported it.

The Biden administration has consistently pushed for stricter gun laws.

President Joe Biden pushed a rule that forced people who owned pistols with arm braces to register them as short-barreled rifles, Politico reported. Pistol braces remain legal as states and gun rights groups sue the ATF over the rule.

Registering a short-barreled rifle with the ATF carries a cost of $200. The National Firearms Act, the law requiring the registration of short-barreled rifles, was last updated in 1986.

Short-barreled rifles are illegal in some states.

Biden also banned the sale of firearm parts lacking serial numbers, which can be used to construct “ghost guns,” and has continuously pushed for a so-called assault weapons ban, according to Fox News Digital.

Some gun rights groups are ready to fight the ATF’s rule should it come to fruition.

“The records of these sales will eventually end up in the ATF’s firearm registry database,” director of federal affairs for Gun Owners of America (GOA) Aidan Johnston told the Daily Caller News Foundation. The ATF maintains a registry of firearms sales, the Washington Free Beacon reported.

Johnston said GOA is “actively preparing to take legal action if and when Joe Biden’s administration releases their rule change.”

Empower Oversight and the ATF did not immediately respond to the DCNF’s requests for comment.

AUTHOR

ROBERT SCHMAD

Contributor.

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Matt Gaetz Calls To Abolish The ATF After Agency Issues Rule Allegedly Making It Harder For Certain People To Buy Guns

January 19, 2023/in Courts & Law, Gun Rights, Hot Topics, News, Policy, Politics, Regulation/by The Daily Caller

Republican Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz introduced legislation Wednesday that would abolish the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) after they enacted a rule that would make pistol stabilizing braces illegal for anyone without a certain license.

The legislation, titled the “Abolish the ATF Act,” would totally eliminate the ATF immediately after the bill is enacted. Gaetz introduced the bill after the ATF announced they would make gun owners face the possibility of being charged with a felony if they do not register their firearms with the stabilizing braces.

Gaetz said that the House GOP has the ATF in their “crosshairs.”

“House Republicans have the ATF in our crosshairs. The continued existence of the ATF is increasingly unwarranted based on their repeated actions to convert law-abiding citizens into felons. They must be stopped. My bill today would abolish the ATF once and for all,” Gaetz said in a statement.

READ THE LEGISLATION HERE:

(DAILY CALLER OBTAINED) — … by Henry Rodgers

In June of 2021, Republican Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene also introduced legislation that would abolish ATF if signed into law, which Gaetz was a co-sponsor of. The Daily Caller first obtained that legislation, titled the “Brian A. Terry Memorial Eliminate the ATF Act.” The bill was named after Marine and Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry, who was killed in a gunfight after a group of armed men attempted to rob smugglers who were transporting drugs from Mexico to the U.S.

The Caller also broke the news of legislation introduced by Republican Kansas Sen. Roger Marshall in the Senate that would protect Americans’ second amendment rights from the ATF-proposed registry for firearms with stabilizing braces.

Democrats have been focused on passing legislation that would stop gun trafficking, ban the import, sale, manufacture, transfer or possession of high-capacity magazines, raise the purchase age for certain rifles from 18 to 21 and promote safer storage of guns.

AUTHOR