How Will the Schumer Shutdown Impact Gun Owners?

With the federal government shut down, tens of thousands of government workers are off the job, but the shutdown will effect some agencies more than others. You might not see a park ranger if you visit a national park while the shutdown is in effect (though the parks will remain open for now), but “excepted” employees like postal workers, servicemembers, and federal law enforcement remain on the job… even if they won’t be collecting a paycheck if the shutdown continues. Instead, they’re supposed to receive back pay once the shutdown is over.  

According to the DOJ’s FY 2026 Contingency Plan, 89% of the department’s 115,000 (or so) employees are excepted from government furloughs, including the vast majority of those who work for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives. 

Excepted employees include: all agents in ATF’s field divisions, who conduct the full range of criminal investigations in the firearms, arson, explosives, alcohol, and tobacco program areas; Industry Operations Investigators who conduct compliance inspections of Federal firearms and Federal explosives licensees (including those mandated under the Safe Explosives Act), as well as application inspections; and other personnel who collect, review and analyze intelligence data in support of criminal investigations. Headquarters support will be maintained only to the extent necessary to support excepted operations.

Similarly, the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System is an exempt function, so NICS checks will continue to take place on all commercial firearms transfers. 

The shutdown, then, shouldn’t have a significant impact on gun owners, gun buyers, or gun sellers. There is one potential division of DOJ, though, that could be affected by the budgetary impasse: the Civil Rights Division. 

General Legal Activities (GLA): The GLA account includes the following components: Office of the Solicitor General, Criminal Division, Civil Division, Environment and Natural Resources Division, Office of Legal Counsel, and Civil Rights Division. The Solicitor General and the Assistant Attorneys General are Presidential Appointees and are not subject to furlough. Three organizations that are impacted by the Department’s ARRP were also funded through GLA inFY 2025: INTERPOL Washington, the Tax Division, and the Office for Access to Justice. 

The excepted employees are necessary to provide legal advice on ongoing excepted functions of the Executive Branch, including matters of national security and presidential authority, to the Attorney General, the Deputy Attorney General, others within the Department, the White House, the National Security Council, and the Departments of State and War. Excepted employees will also review Attorney General Orders, Executive Orders and Proclamations, and presidential memoranda and directives; ensure that criminal litigation continues uninterrupted; seek continuances for civil and appellate litigation, except as necessary for the immediate protection of life or property; proceed with civil and appellate litigation should attempts to secure continuances fail; provide administrative advice and resource allocation guidance to Civil Rights Prosecution personnel and the Assistant Attorney General, Civil Rights Division, in the event of civil disorder; respond to and investigate complaints of alleged criminal civil rights violations involving endangerment of life or property and handle complaints from institutionalized persons concerning life-threatening situations. Also, excepted employees are needed to provide uninterrupted communications among federal, state, local and international law enforcement entities in furtherance of, among other things, criminal investigations and the apprehension of fugitives and criminal and illegal aliens. If a court denies a litigator’s request to postpone a case and orders it to continue, the litigation will become an excepted activity that can continue during the lapse.

The Civil Rights Division, headed up by Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon, has been taking an active role in defending the right to keep and bear arms, including filing a lawsuit on Tuesday over the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department’s refusal to issue concealed carry permits in a timely fashion. Depending on how long the shutdown lasts, it could cause delays in that litigation, and it could also prevent the division from providing amicus briefs in support of challenges to various gun control laws like the gun and magazine bans in Illinois that Dhillon recently argued against before the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. 

Given the slow pace of legal proceedings, though, the shutdown would have to last for months on end before it caused those legal efforts to grind to a halt. I doubt that will be the case, but with the Schumer Shutdown underway, I suppose anything is possible.