The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives has adopted a much friendlier posture toward the gun industry since Donald Trump reassumed the presidency in 2024. In April, the agency announced some 34 proposed rule changes meant to roll back regulatory constraints on gun businesses. The proposals ranged from mundane modernizations of retailer recordkeeping to potentially transformative rollbacks of longstanding gun policy.
The ATF invited anyone to weigh in on 28 of the proposals before they’re finalized, ultimately drawing more than 38,000 public comments. For most of the proposals, the comment period closed in early August.
The Trace analyzed the public comments using an artificial intelligence model to characterize their positions and content. We published our full findings on October 7. Below are five major takeaways:
- Commenters — a mix of gun enthusiasts, firearm industry members, and gun safety advocates — overwhelmingly supported the new changes, with a majority expressing support for 25 of the 28 proposals. As The Trace has reported, many of these changes are unlikely to meaningfully alter how guns are bought and sold in the United States.
- The three remaining proposals are significant, and commenters mostly objected to them. Two would ease gun dealers’ recordkeeping obligations. The third would expand online gun sales by eliminating a requirement that buyers show up in person for a background check..
- The online gun sales rule, which would permit online retailers to ship guns directly to customers’ doors, received some of its harshest criticism from the gun industry itself. The National Shooting Sports Foundation, the industry’s trade group, said the rule “undermines the ability and role of retailers to serve … as the ‘first line of defense’” against illegal sales.
- Gun rights advocates also pushed back against a rule that would require buyers to indicate their biological sex on background check forms. A large number of commenters invoked the Second Amendment to argue against singling out transgender and nonbinary people.
- The vast majority of commenters favored a proposal to narrow who qualifies as a gun dealer under federal law. The change would likely reduce the number of gun sellers that have to conduct background checks on customers. Gun safety advocates have warned that the change could make it easier for traffickers to evade detection.