Setting Anti-Gun Congresswoman Straight on New ATF Rules

Rep. Rosa DeLauro is both an anti-gunner and someone who clearly got her hair styled at a place specializing in serving Batman villains. Her leftist leanings are well-known, and that includes the view that the American people shouldn’t be trusted with guns, even if the Constitution says she can pound sand.

It seems DeLauro isn’t fond of the ATF’s slate of proposed rule changes.

It also seems that the National Shooting Sports Foundation is more than willing to tell her why she’s wrong about just about everything.

Rep. DeLauro’s argument rests on the tired gun control premise that every regulatory burden placed on lawful firearm businesses somehow stops criminals. Federal data prove otherwise.

The Bureau of Justice Statistics reported that 90 percent of criminals in prison who possessed a firearm during their offense did not obtain it from a retail source. Criminals overwhelmingly get firearms through illegal channels. They steal them. They buy them on the black market. They get them “off the street.” They violate the law.

Those are the facts. Rep. DeLauro is entitled to her opinion, but her statements at the press conference — and her true beliefs — suggest she’s ignoring what the data says.

Firearm retailers are not criminals. Law-abiding Americans who pass an FBI National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) verification are not breaking the law. Manufacturers, distributors, retailers and ranges are not responsible for the criminal misuse of lawfully made and sold products.

It is already a felony for prohibited persons to possess firearms. It is a felony to lie on the ATF Form 4473 when purchasing a firearm at retail. It is a felony to act as a straw purchaser, transfer a firearm to a prohibited person or traffic firearms without a license. The law has tools and it has teeth — prison.

Adding more compliance traps for lawful businesses does not stop criminals who never intended to follow the law.

Crime Falling, Gun Ownership Rising

Rep. DeLauro’s warning also runs into another inconvenient fact. Violent crime is falling while lawful firearm ownership remains historically elevated.

FBI data showed violent crime declined nationally in 2024. Preliminary FBI data for 2025 showed a historic decline in violent crime, including a significant decline in murder. Connecticut reflects that trend as well. The state’s violent crime rate in 2024 was 43 percent lower than it was in 2014. Unsurprisingly, Rep. DeLauro chooses to ignore these statistics in her repertoire.

Bingo.

Anti-gunners always do this, but the fact of the matter is that if they were remotely right, we should have seen a massive spike in homicides over the last couple of years, and we haven’t. The Bruen decision put more concealed carriers out into circulation, and that was something anti-gunners repeatedly claimed would lead to more shootings, only it didn’t happen. The opposite happened.

Law-abiding people are not the problem. Law-abiding gun dealers aren’t the problem.

Those who aren’t law-abiding, though, aren’t going to abide by the next set of laws you decide to throw out there. You’re not going to regulate them into being law-abiding. If that were going to happen, the laws against murder would be sufficient all on their own. As that’s clearly not the case, why would more regulation suddenly make everyone act nicely?

Again, that’s simply not the case.

In fact, when you look at the violent crime rate, you see a spike in the early 1970s right after the Gun Control Act was passed. According to the line people like DeLauro typically peddle, that shouldn’t be the case. It should have gone down. It didn’t.

Bruen countered significant gun control laws and, according to that same line, crime should have skyrocketed, and the opposite happened.

I’m not ascribing causation to correlation here. I’m just saying that if they were right, then the correlation would look a lot different than what we actually see.

DeLauro is free to think whatever she wants to think, but she’s not entitled to her own facts.

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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