After years of the Biden administration weaponizing the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) to push unconstitutional gun control, President Donald Trump has had enough. On February 7, Trump issued an executive order instructing Attorney General Pam Bondi to investigate the ATF and roll back the damage done under Biden’s anti-Second Amendment agenda.
Now, 30 U.S. senators are stepping up to speed up that process. They’ve sent a letter to ATF Deputy Director Marvin G. Richardson, calling on the agency to immediately eliminate some of the most egregious “final rules” put in place under Biden’s DOJ.
The letter wastes no time in pointing out the problem. Under Biden, the ATF adopted a series of rules and policies that directly infringed on Americans’ Second Amendment rights. With Trump’s executive order directing Bondi to develop a plan to dismantle Biden’s unlawful firearms regulations, the senators are pushing the ATF to comply without delay.
Leading the charge is Senator John Cornyn of Texas, who took to social media to rally support, reminding Americans that the Biden administration used the ATF as a tool to punish law-abiding gun owners and gun dealers alike. Cornyn and his colleagues are making it clear: the ATF needs to reverse course immediately.
The letter specifically calls out four major rule changes that must be eliminated. First is the ATF’s redefinition of who is “engaged in the business” of selling firearms—a move that broadened the definition so aggressively that private individuals selling even a small number of guns could be classified as gun dealers, requiring licenses and federal oversight. Then there’s the infamous pistol brace rule, which turned millions of legal gun owners into potential felons overnight by suddenly classifying braced pistols as short-barreled rifles under the National Firearms Act.
The so-called “ghost gun” rule is another target, as it directly attacks the American tradition of building personal firearms, something law-abiding citizens have done since the nation’s founding. Finally, the letter calls out Biden’s “zero-tolerance” policy for gun dealers, which was designed to shut down small firearm retailers over minor clerical errors.
But the senators didn’t stop there. They also demanded that the ATF destroy millions of firearm transaction records that it has no business keeping. Under federal law, the ATF isn’t supposed to maintain a gun registry, yet it has amassed a massive database of records from firearm transactions. The letter calls for an immediate purge of these records, which contain the personal information of millions of gun owners but serve no legitimate law enforcement purpose.
The National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF), the firearm industry’s trade association, quickly threw its support behind the effort. In a statement, NSSF’s senior vice president, Lawrence G. Keane, pointed out how the Biden administration used the ATF as a weapon against the firearm industry, turning what should be a regulatory agency into an enforcer of radical gun control. He applauded Trump, Cornyn, and the other senators for working to undo the damage and restore the ATF’s original mission of targeting actual violent crime rather than harassing law-abiding gun owners and retailers.
The senators made it clear that this letter is just the beginning. While it targets some of the most pressing overreaches, they expect a full reckoning for the ATF’s actions under Biden’s administration. With Trump back in charge, there’s a new directive: protect Americans’ constitutional rights, not trample them.
The message to the ATF is simple—comply with Trump’s executive order, roll back Biden’s unconstitutional gun control, and return to enforcing the law as it was intended. Anything less is unacceptable.
