ATF Director Pushes Back on Gun Control Lobby Campaign to Derail Regulatory Reforms

As my colleague Tom Knighton wrote yesterday, the gun control lobby’s not having a great year. In addition to SCOTUS granting cert to several lawsuits challenging “assault weapon” bans and delivering important wins for gun owners this term, they’ve suffered legislative and legal setbacks in a number of states as well. And at the federal level, the ATF has rolled out nearly three dozen regulatory reforms that will impact both the industry and individual gun owners… just not in the way anti-gun activists would like.

Gun control groups have been doing their best to scare the public about these reforms, claiming they’ll lead to violent criminals and dangerously mentally ill individuals arming themselves. They’ve even accused the ATF of pushing reforms to benefit Donald Trump Jr. who has a 1.1 percent stake in an online gun retailer called Grab-a-Gun. 

ATF Director Robert Cekada is pushing back on those claims. In a column published at The Hill on Wednesday, Cekada debunked the gun control lobby’s talking points about a number of proposed rule changes, including revising the definitions of “adjudicated as a mental defective” and “committed to a mental institution.” The biggest change under the revised rule is that individuals who’ve had a fiduciary appointed to help manage their affairs would not automatically be considered adjudicated as a mental defective as a result. 

As Cekada notes, Congress has already blocked agencies like the VA and Social Security Administration from continuing these practices, and the proposal would simply bring the ATF regulations in line with congressional intent. Cekada also shot down the claims by anti-gunners that the ATF knows this proposal will lead to mass shootings. 

In truth, ATF’s cost-benefit analysis did note that the risk “may be minimal, or may be considerably greater, up to and including mass-casualty events.” Disclosing the full range of costs and benefits, including even remote scenarios, is standard regulatory practice.

The ATF Director also directed his attention to the gun control lobby’s lies about a proposed rule on Non-Over-the-Counter (NOTC) sales of firearms. Anti-gun activists have said this rule is meant to benefit Trump Jr. specifically, while also arguing that allowing an FFL to conduct an online sale to an in-state resident will somehow flood the country with illegally obtained guns. 

Some have inaccurately described this as weakening background checks or being done to benefit a particular business interest. All false. ATF has had no engagement with any retailer in developing it and has proposed a process that would strengthen safeguards. 

Every transaction under the rule would still require the same background check as an in-person sale. But they would additionally require notice to local law enforcement, a seven-day waiting period and a two-step identity verification process. This includes live videoconferencing for facial comparison and an ID validity check through a separate federally approved service provider. A buyer would prove their identity twice, through two independent channels, rather than once to a store clerk.

Other inaccurate claims suggest the proposal would let domestic abusers or violent criminals obtain firearms without a background check. It would not. No proposed rule touches the federal categories of prohibited persons, and every covered transaction still requires a background check. Dealers also retain their existing obligation to flag bulk buys, repeated purchases of identical firearms and other sales that indicate possible trafficking.

I’ve said previously that straw buyers aren’t going to bother going through the hassle of doing a NOTC sale when it’s far simpler to just send someone in to a gun shop in the hopes of deceiving the clerk behind the counter, but Cekada’s explanation of how this online process will work thoroughly debunks the assertions of anti-gun activists like Brady’s Kris Brown that teens will be able to swipe their parent’s ID and purchase guns off the internet. 

Streamlining the regulatory system without weakening any actual safeguard is good government, and the public is better served by an accurate account of what the ATF is doing than an alarmed one.

Yes, it is. 

I do wish The Hill had published Cekada’s piece a little earlier than Wednesday, since today is actually the last day to comment on many of these rules. Still, it’s great to see Cekada pushing back on the lies and misinformation spread by the gun control lobby about these proposed reforms… and it’s not too late for you to submit your comments so long as you act today. 

Editor’s Note: The radical Left will stop at nothing to enact their radical gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights.

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