by Karen Mehall Phillips, NRA Media - Tuesday, April 29, 2025
While April was already a great month for celebrating freedom ahead of the 154th NRA Annual Meetings and Exhibits in Atlanta, April 25-27, the NRA Institute for Legislative Action (NRA-ILA) also called special attention to April 7 as the Trump administration revoked the Biden-Harris “zero tolerance” policy for inspections of federal firearm licensees (FFLs). The news is important to share on this NRA hunting news website as the policy was yet one more example of how far anti-gun, anti-hunting extremists in our federal government would go to quash our Second Amendment rights.
President Trump’s edict ended what NRA-ILA justly referred to as “a bureaucratic reign of terror that was costing small business owners their livelihoods” over harmless clerical errors in the extensive required paperwork when conducting regulated gun sales. Also announced was a review of two Biden-Harris anti-gun administrative rules that NRA-ILA fought to keep from going into effect on the grounds they exceeded the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives’ (ATF) regulatory authority, created confusion and caused legal traps for law-abiding gun owners. The first rule covered the regulatory framework surrounding the use of pistol stabilizing braces and the other addressed the definition of who is “engaged in the business” of firearm dealing and required to become an FFL to sell guns, which aimed to criminalize thousands of private firearm sellers.
Of course, those working to exterminate the Second Amendment recognize that the more oppressive the gun laws, the less chance for small firearm businesses to thrive—and the less chance for hunters and shooters to obtain firearms. The Trump administration’s rollback of such policies signals a new era in which the ATF will resume its prior practice of conducting inspections in a more wholistic manner that considers the facts and circumstances of each case and allows for remedial measures to be taken when an FFL is operating in good faith.
In an official statement by the ATF on April 7, Attorney General Pam Bondi explained, “The prior administration’s ‘zero tolerance’ policy unfairly targeted law-abiding gun owners and created an undue burden on Americans seeking to exercise their constitutional right to bear arms. It ends today.”
The zero tolerance policy was among the most infamous Biden-era tactics against a gun industry that then-Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden publicly labeled “the enemy” during a 2020 televised democratic presidential debate. The policy supposedly targeted “willful” violations of a specified list of infractions, including transferring a firearm to a prohibited person; failing to conduct a required background check; falsifying records, such as a firearm transaction form; failing to respond to a trace request; and refusing to permit the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) to conduct an inspection. A single such violation would, under the policy, lead to revoking the FFL’s license.
As shared by NRA-ILA, while those violations, on their face, seem rather serious—and while “willfulness” is supposed to put the government to a high burden of proof—that was not how the policy worked. Falsifying records, for example, could be defined as making a mistake in any of the dozens of inputs necessary to complete an ATF Form 4473, the document that must be completed when a dealer sells a firearm to an unlicensed person. In addition, failure to conduct a required background check didn’t necessarily mean FFLs were selling guns without paperwork as such a scenario could include there being legitimate confusion over the rules. For example, federal law specifies that certain firearm-related permits, including some carry licenses, provide an alternative to the background check normally required. There also can be misunderstandings over when an FFL is required to run a background check when returning a gun to its owner after storage, consignment or repair.
The government’s required showing of “willfulness” is supposed to prevent exploiting innocent mistakes by firearm dealers who are acting in good faith from being used against them. Yet under the Biden-Harris zero tolerance policy, the ATF could claim that the specified zero tolerance violation inherently demonstrated willfulness.
As reported by The Trace, which NRA-ILA explains has been targeting the Second Amendment and gun laws for nearly a decade,” the Biden-Harris policy was “a crackdown that triggered the steepest increase in gun store license revocations in [ATF’s] history.” Fortunately, the official ATF statement also included a comment from ATF Acting Director Kash Patel, who said, “The DOJ and ATF will conduct an in-depth review over the coming months and will engage in consultations with stakeholders, including gun rights organizations, industry leaders and legal experts.”
As we hit the 100-day mark under the new Trump administration, NRA-ILA commends it for working to restore clarity and fairness in firearm regulations and looks forward to being included in the review process. In the meantime, President Donald Trump continues to keep his word to gun owners, hunters and shooters—and the firearm industry and FFLs who serve them—as he follows through with “promises made, promises kept.”
As we did with previous pro-gun moves by the Trump administration since President Donald Trump took office 100 days ago—starting with his executive order on Feb. 7 to protect and expand the Second Amendment rights of all law-abiding Americans—the NRA will continue to report on the actions of the Trump administration as it acts on its promise to restore the full protections of the Right to Keep and Bear Arms in the name of protecting constitutional freedoms.