More changes to ATF rules and regulations are in the works, according to a new report from the Washington Post, though the paper’s reporting is pretty short on details.
According to the Post, the DOJ is “considering” changing or repealing multiple regulations in a bid to “bolster support” from Second Amendment advocates and organizations that have complained the agency is still defending far too many federal gun laws, rules, and regs.
Some of the changes are expected to ease restrictions on the private sale of guns and loosening regulations around shipping firearms.
Other changes to Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives regulations under consideration would change the types of firearms that can be imported and make licensing fees refundable. Officials are also expected to change the form required to purchase guns to have applicants list their biological sex at birth. The current form asks applicants to list their sex.
Presumably those first two changes refer to repealing the “engaged in the business” rule established during the Biden administration that treats almost every private sale of a firearm as a commercial sale that should be done by or through an FFL, as well as ending the ban on shipping handguns through the U.S. Postal Service. The DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel has already come out with a slip opinion stating that the law, which is already subject to a lawsuit filed by GOA, violates the Second Amendment and should not be defended by the DOJ.
I’m intrigued by the potential rule change that would allow more firearms to be imported, though I suspect that the Trump administration will only be able to go so far in changing rules and regulations before they run into statute that must be addressed by Congress or through litigation.
The Post reports that officials were trying to announce the rule changes to coincide with the start of SHOT Show, which kicks off today in Las Vegas, but are “still finalizing their new regulations and the timing of the announcement.”
In the first months of the Trump administration, the Justice Department proposed merging the Drug Enforcement Administration with ATF — a move that ATF’s backers feared would leave the agency powerless. Opponents of ATF, meanwhile, feared that the merger would give the agency too much power. The merger plans have not come to fruition and, instead, the Trump administration in November quietly nominated a respected ATF veteran to lead the agency.
The nominee, Robert Cekada, is scheduled to have his hearing next month, and administration officials are worried about how the announcement of the new regulations could boost or hurt his nomination chances, according to one person familiar with the nomination process. Announcing the loosening of regulations ahead of his nomination hearing could risk the support of moderate Republicans, said the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss personnel issues.
I tend to doubt that announcing these rule changes would jeopardize Cekada’s support on Capitol Hill, but if that is a genuine concern for the administration then why on earth are any officials talking to the press about these changes, even on background? That gives senators the opportunity to grill the nominee about these potential changes during his confirmation hearings, and it won’t be a great look if Cekada demurs or declines to discuss specifics.
Another interesting bit from the Post’s report concerns the DOJ’s new Second Amendment Section in the Civil Rights Division, headed up by Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon. According to the Post, “[t]op Justice Department officials have not fully backed it, in part because Congress needs to approve the creation of a new section within the Civil Rights Division.”
Dhillon so far has not hired many attorneys with legal expertise in the Second Amendment to work in the group, the people said. Instead, she has used existing attorneys within the Civil Rights Department to staff some of the group’s projects.
Top Democratic lawmakers on the Senate Judiciary Committee have questioned the creation and legality of Dhillon’s group.
“Since President Trump took office, you have decimated the Division’s nonpartisan workforce and changed the Division’s enforcement priorities to serve the President’s agenda in lieu of our federal civil rights laws,” Sens. Peter Welch (D-Vermont) and Dick Durbin (D-Illinois) wrote in a letter to Dhillon this month. “The creation of the Second Amendment Section is another example of this profound retreat from the core mission of the Civil Rights Division.”
Dhillon herself has been open about the need to hire more attorneys with experience in Second Amendment issues. When I spoke to her for Bearing Arms Cam & Company last month, Dhillon encouraged attorneys with a 2A background to apply to work in her office, and admitted that many of the attorneys currently working in the Civil Rights Division aren’t big supporters of the right to keep and bear arms.
I’m not sure the Post has told us much that we didn’t already know. We’ve been told that the repeal of the Biden-era rules imposed on gun owners and the firearms industry are going to be undone, and Dhillon has spoken firsthand about the challenges she faces internally… at least from below. This is the first I’ve heard of a lack of enthusiasm for the Second Amendment Section among senior DOJ leadership, but the paper’s reporting on that nugget is so vague that it could be referring to careerists and not appointees like Attorney General Pam Bondi or Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche (the latter will be attending SHOT Show this week, for what its worth).
To me, the big questions left unanswered by the Post’s report are why it’s taken so long to formally repeal things like the “engaged in the business” rule, and why the DOJ continues to defend at least some of these rules in court if, in fact, the administration is working to undo them. Maybe we’ll learn more about that during Cekada’s confirmation hearings next month, though it’s possible the administration will have taken formal steps to repeal that rule before then.
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