GOA Calls Out Trump’s Inaction on ATF

On the campaign trail, Donald Trump promised to quickly reverse the executive actions and ATF rules that Joe Biden put in place over the past four years. In the first days of his second term, however, the president has yet to take steps to undo the agency’s rules on frames and receivers, pistol stablizing braces, and who is “engaged in the business” of dealing firearms.

Now Gun Owners of America is calling out Trump’s early inaction. In an email to members this week, the 2A organization called on supporters to send a “constant stream of letters” urging Trump to fulfill his campaign pledge and take action to rein the agency’s abuses. 

Over at The Reload, writer Jake Fogelman notes that despite GOA’s critique, Second Amendment organizations are still “generally supportive of Trump” and remain hopeful that he’ll “eventually” fulfill his promises, but argues that 2A groups don’t have much of a hand to play to spur Trump to action. 

As is often his style, Trump has made sweeping declarations about his support for the Second Amendment but few distinct policy promises. He helped strip all of the specific gun policy plans from the 2024 Republican platform. Outside of his commitment to undo Biden’s gun rules and a longstanding promise to sign a national reciprocity bill, which remains unlikely to make it to his desk, he didn’t say he’d do much at all. 

What, if anything, can gun-rights activists do about that? They appear to be in a fairly weak position in the current Trump coalition.

After all, Trump unilaterally banned bumpstocks and made comments backing “Red Flag” laws that were even more aggressive than what Bondi said. None of that cost him politically. Many gun-rights advocates were upset about how Trump reacted to several major mass shootings, but Republican primary voters weren’t bothered much. He cruised to the nomination, and his opponents didn’t make much noise about his gun record. In fact, neither did the gun-rights groups themselves.

Maybe things would’ve been different if anyone had tried to force the issue. But they didn’t, and it’s hard to see why Trump wouldn’t take gun voters for granted after that.

I don’t think Trump’s taking gun owners (or gun voters) for granted, at least not specifically. You could make an even stronger case towards pro-life voters; Trump made a number of comments on the campaign trail that cut directly against what the pro-life movement has been demanding in both Congress and state legislatures, but faced with the binary choice of Trump or Kamala Harris, pro-life groups sided with the Republican candidate. 

As Fogelman notes, Trump cruised to the nomination last year, and even if 2A groups had vocally opposed his campaign I don’t think they could have derailed it. The choice for groups like NRA, GOA, and others was pretty simple: back Trump or stay out of of the presidential race. There’s no scenario where these groups could have backed Biden given his whole-of-goverment attacks on the firearms industry and gun owners, and Trump did court the gun vote to some degree, even if he didn’t go as far as many of us wanted to see. 

One could argue that Trump’s refusal to back a gun ban after he was the target of an assassination was a big win for Second Amendment groups, and a clear signal that his attitude has changed since his first term, when he expressed support for “red flag” laws in the immediate aftermath of the Parkland shootings. 

Still, a policy of benign neglect isn’t enough, and I’m glad to see GOA trying to apply some public pressure to Trump in the hopes that he’ll start moving on his campaign promises. I get that Trump’s top priority right now is immigration and the economy, but I share GOA’s concern over the lack of movement when it comes to rescinding the ATF’s abusive rules and nominating a director that can bring the agency to heel.