DOGE enters ATF with mandate to slash gun regulations

Washington Post

2 days ago

The U.S. DOGE Service has sent staff to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives with the goal of revising or eliminating dozens of rules and gun restrictions by July 4, according to multiple people with knowledge of the efforts, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss plans that have not been made public.
The initial target was to change 47 regulations, an apparent reference to Donald Trump's status as the 47th president of the United States, two of the people said. But ATF and DOGE staffers are now poised to exceed that goal, with upward of 50 changes planned.
The revisions are part of a seismic shift unfolding at ATF as the Trump administration proposes slashing the law enforcement agency's budget and dramatically reducing the number of inspectors who ensure that gun sellers are in compliance with federal laws. Some Republicans in Congress have called for abolishing the agency altogether, and Attorney General Pam Bondi has said she wants to merge ATF with the Drug Enforcement Administration.
If the plans are enacted, it would be a major win for pro-gun advocacy groups, who have long claimed ATF is an agency with too many gun regulations that tramples on Second Amendment rights. Gun-control advocates fear that the changes afoot at ATF will more easily allow potentially dangerous people to obtain weapons with little recourse.
The exact scope and details of the potential changes are still being determined. ATF has hundreds of regulations, and revisions could include changing the responsibilities of certain ATF positions, updating what types of firearms can be imported, and making licensing fees refundable.
'As Attorney General Bondi has made clear, ATF is working hard to reduce regulatory red tape that burdens lawful gun owners and to ensure agents are doing real police work hunting down criminals and gang members — not knocking on the doors of lawful gun owners in the middle of the night,' said Chad Gil Martin, a spokesman for the Justice Department, which oversees ATF.
The Trump administration-backed ATF general counsel, Robert Leider, an ardent Second Amendment advocate, is overseeing the changes at ATF while working with DOGE, the people said. He has shifted additional ATF attorneys to work on the changes.
DOGE is a non-Cabinet agency originally launched by billionaire Elon Musk to carry out controversial cost-cutting efforts that have resulted in mass attempted layoffs and legal battles with mixed results. The agency has more recently begun pushing for policy and regulatory changes.
In addition to dozens of regulation cuts, Leider and his team are planning to change the legally mandated 4473 Form that most buyers are required to fill out when purchasing a firearm, shrinking it from the current seven pages to as few as three pages. Gun sellers are required to keep the records and have them readily available if law enforcement needs them to trace a gun during a criminal investigation or if ATF inspectors visit to see if the seller is complying with federal laws.
Gun rights proponents have complained that the form is too cumbersome and long, ripe for people to make mistakes. They accused the Biden administration of punitively punishing people for simple paperwork errors — allegations that the Biden administration has denied, pointing to public data that shows that fewer than 1 percent of the 130,000 or so licensed gun sellers and manufacturers got their licenses revoked between July 2021 and December 2024.
People familiar with the potential changes said the form instructions would be truncated and that some of the questions to determine if a potential buyer is legally allowed to own a firearm may be condensed into one large 'yes' or 'no' question. For example, separate questions ask people to answer if they have been committed to a mental institution, have been dishonorably discharged from the military or are an unlawful user of drugs.
These and others could be combined into one question under the potential changes, two people familiar with them said. The question asking if the potential buyer is a felon would remain a stand-alone question.
Some people interviewed said they fear that the changes could lead to more inaccuracies — and may make it harder for prosecutors to be able to prove that someone intentionally lied when filling out the federal form to purchase a gun. In a high-profile case last June, a jury in Delaware convicted President Joe Biden's son, Hunter Biden, for lying about his drug use when he filled out that federal form to purchase a gun.
'I know we are going to see changes to the 4473 and we are getting close, that's in process,' Larry Keane — the general counsel of National Shooting Sports Foundation, a firearms trade association — said on the 'Bearing Arms Cam & Co' podcast this week. 'People just need to be a little patient, give ATF chief counsel some time in dotting the I's and crossing the T's and the internal review that has to take place. But people will be pleased as we move forward, and I think we will see significant progress in correcting bad rulings.'
Under the Justice Department's latest budget proposal, the Trump administration would slash 541 of ATF's more than 800 inspectors. Multiple people interviewed said that the current inspection workforce is already stretched thin and inspected fewer than 10 percent — or 9,696 — of businesses and people who hold licenses to sell, collect, import or manufacture firearms.
There is no federal requirement for how often a gun store or manufacturer must be inspected. But inspectors typically visit a dealer if an abnormal number of crimes are committed with guns that come from a specific store or if a large number of crimes are committed by people who newly purchased guns from a single place. Inspectors may also visit a seller or manufacturer if they haven't had an inspection in years.
Inspectors are allowed to make unannounced visits to license holders only during business hours.
People familiar with ATF said that, with just a few hundred inspectors, there would probably be few firearm-related inspections. Federal law requires that explosive sites be inspected at least once every three years. There are currently around 9,000 federal explosive licensees, which means that the remaining 350 or so inspectors would be responsible for inspecting 3,000 explosive sites each year.
Gun-control advocacy groups said that there would be few resources left to dedicate to firearm inspections. They fear that gun sellers and manufacturers would have little incentive to be diligent with their recordkeeping, which they said could make it harder to trace firearms involved in crimes. They said these records can be crucial in identifying gun traffickers.
'The Administration seems hell-bent on ushering in a golden age for gun criminals, gutting the only agency specifically tasked with keeping communities safe from gun violence,' John Feinblatt, president of Everytown for Gun Safety, a gun-control advocacy group, said in a statement to The Washington Post. 'These cuts would be a dream come true for gun traffickers, straw purchasers, and unscrupulous gun dealers — and a nightmare for law enforcement and public safety.'
Adam Skaggs, chief counsel and vice president of Giffords Law Center, another gun-control advocacy group, agreed: 'The administration claims to support law enforcement and care about fighting crime, but they are proposing the most radical defunding of the police we have ever seen from the federal government,' Skaggs said.
Trump has yet to nominate a permanent ATF director, and the administration has pushed out many of its top career staffers, including the second-most-powerful person at the agency. The administration also booted the agency's longtime general counsel, making it a political position and hiring Leider.
In late February, Trump said that Kash Patel, the FBI director, would at least temporarily lead ATF — a surprise announcement that put Patel atop two major law enforcement agencies with distinct mandates. More than six weeks into his job, The Post reported that Patel had shown up at ATF headquarters only once and had scant communication with senior staffers at agency.
The administration then replaced Patel in early April with Army Secretary Dan Driscoll, who holds the two roles simultaneously.