ATF Announces New Policy It Says Will Protect Privacy of Gun Owners

The Bureau of Alcohol, Firearms, Tobacco, and Explosives announced a new policy on Monday that the agency claims will safeguard the privacy rights of gun owners. 

ATF is instituting new measures to protect gun-owner privacy and to prevent the misuse of a law enforcement tool. Senior-leadership approval is required for all requests to receive information from the NICS alert to investigate firearms trafficking. https://t.co/TWiD00lbZp #ATF pic.twitter.com/zwjeMjYHA0

— ATF HQ (@ATFHQ) April 25, 2025

The memo from Assistant ATF Director Robert Cekada, dated April 23, 2025, lays out the new policy in greater detail. 

The use of the NICS Alert is a valuable investigative technique for firearm trafficking investigations. It is critical that this tool is utilized properly and only when needed. To this end, we are undergoing an extensive review of all current alerts and stipulating additional requirements for future use of NICS alerts. Effective immediately, Special Agents in Charge (SACs) approval and Deputy Assistant Director (DAD) concurrence is now mandatory for all NICS alerts. NICS alerts may only be utilized in cases involving suspected violations of federal firearm statutes. See 28 C.F.R. Part 25.This investigative technique should not be utilized to primarily investigate state firearm laws. A formal memo for approval will be utilized which will require the following information: 

Requestor’s name, field division/office, contact number, and email;

ATF case number;

Name of the person subject to alert;

List of suspected federal firearm violations;

Summary of suspect’s activity to date which meets FBI’s criteria to initiate the NICS alert; and

Requested length of the NICS alert: 30, 60, 90 or 180 days.

Over at Ammoland, John Crump provides some background on the use (and abuse) of the ATF’s monitoring of the National Instant Check System. 

AmmoLand News first reported the ATF using a NICS monitoring system in 2021 after learning about the system through an inside source. The ATF would use NICS to monitor Americans buying guns. Data in NICS is supposed to be deleted within 24 hours, but the ATF requested that all data be saved for 30, 60, 90, or 180 days. The targets being monitored were not being charged with any crime. The ATF was tracking people who they felt “might” commit a crime in the future or associated with the “wrong” people.

The monitoring outraged many in the gun community who felt that the ATF and FBI were creating a “pre-crime” program. Gun Owners of America (GOA) filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to show the use of the system. It turned out that the system was in widespread use and not only for those who “might” commit a federal crime. The ATF was monitoring people who might break California state law by purchasing a long gun that wasn’t legal within the Golden State.

Based on my reading of Cekada’s memo, use or monitoring of the NICS system will only be used in when there are investigations into violations of federal gun laws going forward, so the abuses that GOA uncovered through the use of FOIA laws should come to an end. 

Cekada’s memo states that the new policy applies to all existing NICS monitoring, which could result in some bureaucratic backlog depending on just how common the use of these NICS Alerts are these days. 

The ATF shouldn’t be investigating or helping to enforce state-level gun control laws in California, New York, New Jersey, or anywhere else, so Cekada’s directive is long overdue. There’s a reason why Steve Dettelbach didn’t take the same steps when he was in charge of the agency. The abuse of the NICS monitoring was just part of the whole-of-government attacks on gun owners launched by the Biden administration, and Dettelbach was willfully aiding and abetting these Big Brother-esque practices. This memo is another sign that the ATF is being reformed from within, and ATF Director Daniel Driscoll and Assistant Director Cekada should be recognized for moving in the right direction when it comes to treating gun owners as normal Americans exercising a fundamental civil right instead of treating them like criminal suspects who need to be under ?Uncle Sam’s microscope.