House Appropriations Bill Signals Rough Road for ATF/DEA Merger

Now that the One Big Beautiful Bill has been signed into law, Congress is turning its attention to a spate of funding bills for various agencies. The House Appropriations Committee is looking at a $1.2 billion budget for the ATF in the next fiscal year, down from its current level of $1.6 billion. That figure is in line with what the Trump administration has requested, but the Appropriations bill comes with some strings attached to the funding. 

The House Appropriations Committee’s latest funding bill would stipulate that the money for ATF cannot be used to transfer its functions to other departments (such as the DEA), and that the department would not receive full funding if NFA processing times become too long:… pic.twitter.com/HqVveaWWLW

— Firearms Policy Coalition (@gunpolicy) July 14, 2025

Now this language is subject to being amended, but as introduced the funding bill’s specifics are pretty interesting. This is clearly an attempt to head off the Trump administration’s push to merge the Drug Enforcement Agency and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives; a plan that has already received quite a bit of pushback from House and Senate Republicans. Tying some strings to the ATF’s budget doesn’t guarantee that a merger won’t happen, but in any case combining the two agencies does require Congress to sign off, and if there’s majority support for the current terms of the funding bill that’s a pretty clear signal that there’s not enough interest in the administration’s plan to bring it to fruition. 

Meanwhile, expect the ATF to push back against the second part of the bill that Firearms Policy Coalition highlighted. The agency is already looking at a $400 million budget cut, but it’s total budget could be just $480 million if the ATF doesn’t process NFA applications in a timely manner. Could this be a viable way for gun owners themselves to slash ATF funding? 

Organize everyone you can to file at once

Either everyone gets their permission slips in 60 days or the ATF gets their budget slashed

— TK (@TyofTX) July 14, 2025

I honestly don’t know how much formal organizing will be necessary to strain the ATF’s ability to process NFA applications within the 120 days for paper applications and 60 days for electronic filings once 2026 rolls around. Starting on January 1 the $200 tax on suppressors, short-barreled firearms, and “any other weapons” gets zeroed out, and I suspect there’ll be a flood of applications once the tax has disappeared. 

ATF leadership will almost certainly argue that if they don’t have the resources to process NFA applications in a timely manner, axing the agency’s budget by another 60 percent is only going to make matters exponentially worse. 

Can the agency handle the strain? Well, last month the average wait time for NFA approval was 48 days for paper applications and 9 days for individuals filing electronically, with electronic applications for to transfer the NFA item to a trust taking an average of 13 days before being approved or denied. A dramatic increase in applications come the new year might slow things down a little bit, but it shouldn’t lead to wait times tripling. If that does happen, I think it would be fair to ask if ATF bureaucrats are playing games with the approval process. If so, then the agency should be punished. 

I just don’t want to see that happen in a way that will punish gun owners as well, and I wonder if it wouldn’t be better to require the agency to shift staffing to NFA approvals if the wait times exceed the limit imposed by Congress instead of simply cutting the ATF’s funding. I don’t know if the administration would go along with that, though, if it meant fewer agents in the field conducting investigations or aiding agencies like ICE in enforcing immigration laws.   

The current language is going to be the subject of lots of debate, and I won’t predict at this point how much it may change. I am glad to see, though, that House Republicans are not only skeptical about merging DEA and ATF, but are looking to ensure that gun owners don’t get caught in a bureaucratic nightmare and lengthy delays when purchasing NFA items. 

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