The Biden years were bad for America, but it was a Golden Age for the gun control lobby. Biden established the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention and staffed it with anti-gun activists; imposed a number of executive orders aimed at gun owners, including an effort to impose universal background checks without congressional apprpoval; and even tried to install gun control advocate and Giffords senior advisor David Chipman has head of the ATF.
That effort failed, but Biden’s second choice was still a gun control supporter who went along with every one of the adminstration’s attacks on gun owners and the firearms industry.
Those days are over. Recently-confirmed ATF Director Robert Cekada, who was approved on a bipartisan vote in the Senate, and ATF General Counsel Robert Leider have proposed nearly three dozen rule changes for the agency, and the vast majority of them offer improvements over the anti-gun regulations crafted by the previous administration. Understandably, the gun control lobby isn’t happy about these developments, but Everytown is still nutty for proclaiming that the ATF has been “captured” by the firearms industry.
In many of the proposed rules, the ATF explicitly says that they are designed to benefit the gun industry. For example, the ATF estimates that 3.28 million gun buyers would take advantage of one of the agency’s most troubling proposals: allowing FFLs to ship guns directly to a buyer’s door without visiting a brick-and-mortar location, in what is known as a “non-over-the-counter” (NOTC) transaction. The ATF states that the rule is focused on “reducing restrictions and removing barriers” for gun sales, and acknowledges that “[c]onvenience is certainly a factor for some firearms purchasers, such as repeat purchasers” — echoing language used by online retailers like Donald Trump Jr.’s GrabAGun.
And what’s so troubling about this? Under the proposed rule, gun buyers would still have to prove their identity to FFLs and would still undergo a NICS check before they could purchase a firearm. Would this benefit gun buyers? Yep. Would it facilitate gun trafficking? Nope. So what’s the issue?
Everytown’s problem is that the ATF’s proposals don’t treat gun owners and the firearms industry as existential enemies, and Everytown’s Smoking Gun editor Greg Lickenbrook makes some pretty bold claims in asserting that these rules will pose a problem for public safety.
Another ATF proposal would double the length of time that a background check for a completed Form 4473 is valid for, creating the risk that a person will become prohibited in that period but still be able to purchase a firearm. Incredibly, the ATF states that the proposal increases the risk that a prohibited person will obtain a firearm and use it “to inflict mass casualties” when they “would have been prevented under the current baseline requirement to renew the background check.
Not-so-incredibly, Lickenbrook is leaving out some crucial parts of the ATF’s rationale for expanding the validity of a Form 4473 from 30 days to two months. Here’s what the agency actually wrote in the proposed rule:
Internal records also show that the 30-day time limit is causing many technical violations for FFLs. Over the past five years, 619 inspections have recorded 1,050 violations of the 30-day rule. This § 478.102(c) technical violation, which has been cited among other substantive violations, contributed to revoking 95 federal firearms licenses, with another 237 FFLs receiving warning conferences. Of the 1,050 violations, 78 percent were within two calendar months of the original check.
As a result, ATF is proposing to extend the time period during which an initiated Form 4473 and its accompanying NICS background check would continue to be valid for a purchase, from the current 30 days to two months. ATF does not believe that extending the validity of Form 4473 and its accompanying NICS check by approximately one more month will adversely impact public safety. In theory, there is a risk that a person could become prohibited between the first and second months after the background check, and there are no available statistics for how many purchasers who lawfully purchase firearms become prohibited persons between the first and second month after purchasing. But ATF has no evidence (even anecdotal evidence) suggesting that the risk is high. The proposed two-month validity of Forms 4473 and accompanying NICS checks is also far shorter than the Brady Act’s provision for alternative permits, which can remain valid for up to five years from the date they were issued. 18 U.S.C. 922(t)(3)(A)(i)(II). Given that an additional month will prevent the majority of regulatory violations for stale forms and NICS checks, ATF thinks the two-month period strikes a better balance between avoiding unnecessary regulatory violations while preserving public safety.
Yes, this proposed rule will help FFLs avoid technical violations that, under the Biden administration’s “zero tolerance” policy, led to license revocations. Does this mean the agency has been “captured” by the firearms industry? No, it’s just another sign that the ATF will no longer be acting as a subsidiary of the gun control movement.
Lickenbrook complains that “[e]ven the proposed and final rules that seem less significant — like one that would ‘allow importers to sell training rounds for retail or commercial use as well as law enforcement purposes’ with fewer restrictions — are designed to benefit the gun industry.”
Making it easier to import training ammunition, according to the ATF, would benefit consumers, “who would see lower prices,” as well as importers, “who would see higher profits.”
That’s only an issue if you think gun owners should have to pay through the nose to exercise their Second Amendment rights, and that the firearms industry should operate in the red. Of course, that’s exactly what Everytown and their cohorts want, and I welcome their disappointment about the ATF’s proposals. If they’re unhappy, that makes me even more supportive of the vast majority of ATF’s proposals.
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