The ATF Hasn’t Been Abolished, But It Is Being Reshaped

While the big news of the morning for Second Amendment advocates is the House budget bill that removes suppressors from the National Firearms Act, there are other signs of progress coming from the Trump administration when it comes to the red tape wrapped around our right to keep and bear arms. 

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, which was an instrumental part of Joe Biden’s whole-of-government attack on gun owners and the firearms industry, is now touting numerous reforms that have been enacted over the past few months… as well as several other initiatives that are still in progress. 

🚨BREAKING🚨 ATF just published a list of 10 pro-gun achievements & at least 8 more pro-gun actions that are “in progress”: 1. Ceasing to “create entirely new laws by administrative order” 2. Reversing the Biden Ban on importation of non-lethal training ammunition. 3. Ending Biden’s Zero Tolerance Policy 4. Writing a new FFL Revocation Policy which is not designed to revoke licenses & expand ATF’s registry 5. Encouraging Zero Toleranced FFLs to re-apply 6. Protecting gun store privacy & ending Biden era FFL reporting 7. Severely reining in ATF’s NICS Monitoring Program 8. Appointing an Industry Liaison to work with the 2A industry, not against it 9. Requiring the ATF Director to approve all new classifications letters 10. Quicker Firearms & Ammunition Technology Division (FATD) responses to FFL inquiries. Additional efforts currently in progress include: 1. Simplifying the interstate transport of SBRs & SBSs 2. Increasing the number of states where a CCW is an alternative to a background check 3. Simplifying ATF Form 4473 to make it more concise & user-friendly 4. Ensuring uniformity in dealer inspections & enforcement 5. Reversing a ban on the importation of dual use barrels 6. Allowing electronic signatures on NFA forms 7. Identifying & eliminating outdated or unnecessary rules 8. Publishing more commercial data

— Gun Owners of America (@GunOwners) May 20, 2025

These are all substantive measures and a sign of real progress in reforming the ATF to be an agency that views the firearms industry as a partner, not an adversary. 

While some of these efforts have been publicly announced before, the agency’s encouragement for FFLs who had their licenses revoked under Biden’s “zero tolerance” rule to re-apply and have their license re-instated is a new and welcome development. Hopefully that process will be expedited, and gun shops like The Tactical Edge in Tennessee will soon be able to start selling firearms again instead of having to scrape by through sales of accessories. Store owners William Boswell and Robert Snyder say the ATF found a total of ten paperwork errors out of more than 2,500 forms filed with the agency, and used that error rate of less than 1% to shut down their ability to both sell and manufacture firearms. 

Tennessee Rep. Mark Green sent a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi last month requesting the DOJ review the revoked FFLs with an eye towards reinstating those who didn’t really engage in any “willful” effort to deceive the agency or file false paperwork. It sounds like while the Justice Department might not be that proactive, once FFLs have applied to have their license reinstated the ATF won’t be holding the Biden-era revocation against them. 

My biggest gripe with the list of the ATF’s recent efforts is that we still haven’t seen steps taken to formally undo the Biden-era rules on frames and receivers, pistol stabilizing braces, and the “engaged in the business rule”. I’ve been told by sources within the agency that process of repealing those rules is underway, but I’m surprised to see that those items weren’t listed as part of the “additional efforts currently in progress.” I assume those efforts are still ongoing, but we really need to see the formal intent to repeal those rules published in the Federal Register.