GOA: Why Is DOJ Defending Biden’s ‘Zero Tolerance’ Policy on Gun Dealers?

One of the first pro-Second Amendment moves of Donald Trump’s second term was the announcement that, going forward, the “zero tolerance” policy adopted by the ATF towards FFLs would be no more. The policy allowed the agency to seek license revocations for even minor paperwork errors, destroying livelihoods and businesses for things like abbreviating a county instead of spelling it out. 

Gun Owners of America had sued the ATF over the policy during the Biden administration, and according to the organization, despite public statements to the contrary, the Department of Justice under Attorney General Pam Bondi is actually sticking with the arguments deployed by then-AG Merrick Garland to defend the “zero tolerance” policy.

In Gun Owners of America’s (GOA) ongoing case challenging the Biden administration’s “zero tolerance” policy, which implemented stringent standards for federal firearms dealers that enabled licenses to be revoked over paperwork errors, the government does not intend to change its position, according to GOA’s Tuesday filing exclusively obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation.

A current DOJ lawyer informed GOA the government has “no plans to abandon its previous arguments” in recent communications about the case, per the filing.

The Biden DOJ previously argued that the Second Amendment does not protect private businesses’ right to sell firearms, according to court filings.

GOA’s latest filing details a number of inconsistencies with DOJ’s stance and public statements by officials in the Trump administration, including the president himself. 

For starters is Defendants’ steadfast denial that their AdverseAction Policy (“AAP”) caused any “legal injury” or “consequences” to gundealers. That is not the President’s understanding. As the White House 2026 budget request observes, “[t]he previous administration used the ATF to attack gun-owning Americans… by … the revocation of Federal Firearms Licenses, which shut down small businesses across the Nation.” And while Defendants argue to this Court that “plaintiffs’ fear of mass FFL closures is not borne out by the ATF data,” the White House acknowledges otherwise– that ATF “was weaponized to end the livelihoods of law-abiding small business owners,” which “led to a nearly six-fold increase in enforcement actions….” Indeed, if the “zero tolerance” AAP never caused any “legal injury”, there would be no reason for Defendant ATF to invite “any federal firearms licensees that had their licenses revoked or surrendered under the Enhanced Regulatory Enforcement Policy to reapply” and “be judged under the new” standard now. Defendants cannot both (i) scramble to fix the harm they caused and (ii) claim to this Court that no harm ever occurred.

The filing goes on to note that the DOJ is arguing that GOA’s Second Amendment claims should be considered null and void because “the Second Amendment does not … protect the right of a private business … to sell firearms.” Now, if we have the right to keep and bear, we must also have a right to acquire a firearm. And if we have the right to acquire a firearm, by necessity there must also be a right to sell a firearm. Otherwise, an anti-gun state like California could simply ban gun sales altogether without violating the Second Amendment; a legal absurdity and a constitutional abomination. 

So what’s going on here? Is this a case of DOJ attorneys going rogue to defend a Biden-era policy that’s been undone by the Trump administration, or is this a case of DOJ taking one position in a court of law and another in the court of public opinion?  

It would be one thing if the DOJ was arguing that GOA’s lawsuit was moot because the “zero tolerance” policy is no longer in effect… though GOA contends that, absent a court ruling, future administrations could once again impose this standard and ignore the fact that federal statute requires “willful” violations to have occurred before a license can be revoked. I’m not saying it would be a good argument, but it would be better than what we’re seeing from the DOJ at the moment: an insistence that the Biden administration did nothing wrong by promulgating this policy attacking FFLs over minor paperwork errors. 

Editor’s Note: Even with a pro-Second Amendment president like Donald Trump, gun owners need to be on guard for career bureaucrats and anti-gun officials attacking our rights. 

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