In April, the Trump administration proposed nearly three dozen policy changes meant to liberate gun businesses from bureaucratic red tape. As he unveiled the package at a news conference, Attorney General Todd Blanche declared it “the most comprehensive” set of regulatory reforms in the history of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, which regulates the gun industry. Representatives from the nation’s most prominent gun industry trade groups, arrayed behind Blanche as he spoke, clasped hands and cheered once the measures were signed.
Given the enthusiasm, it seemed likely that when the ATF invited public comment on 28 of the changes as part of a standard review of new regulations, they would receive unified gun industry support. But a Trace analysis of the nearly 38,000 submitted comments reveals divisions among gun businesses and their customers on key measures. Three of the most significant proposals drew mostly negative comments. 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.
Most of the proposals The Trace analyzed received broad support. Twenty-one were backed by at least 90 percent of commenters. These included proposals that would make it easier to travel across state lines with a gun and remove restrictions on pistol stabilizing braces, an accessory that drew public scrutiny after its use in mass shootings. As The Trace has reported, many of these proposals are unlikely to meaningfully change the ways that guns are bought and sold in America. For example, courts have already struck down the restrictions on stabilizing braces.
The online gun sales rule is potentially more transformative. By allowing retailers to ship firearms directly to customers in the same state, it would open the door for online purveyors to sell vast quantities of guns without a storefront. Several gun store owners said the change poses a public safety threat and could hurt their business, though some were optimistic that their stores would adapt.
For most of the proposals, the public comment period closed in early August. The ATF must now review the feedback before issuing final, enforceable rules, a process that can take months. The ATF did not respond to Trace requests for comment for this story.
To examine the public comments, The Trace relied on an artificial intelligence model designed to classify them by their positions and arguments. We used a second model to analyze text for meaning, rather than exact wording, to help identify recurring themes and likely form comments — those advocacy groups draft and ask their supporters to submit. The analysis covered the vast majority of comments the ATF received, but some submissions weren’t publicly available. Some may be posted later, but federal agencies may withhold comments that reveal personally identifiable information.
Electronic Records and Retention Periods
Two proposals concerning gun dealer records drew some of the strongest resistance, much of it rooted in gun rights supporters’ longstanding fear of a federal gun registry, The Trace’s analysis found.
One proposal would allow dealers to store their sales records electronically. The ATF depends on sales records to trace guns recovered in crimes, but is legally prohibited from maintaining a searchable registry. As a result, gun stores have historically been required to maintain paper records, an administrative headache that has left some businesses with storage closets full of paper. When a store goes out of business, it must ship its records to the ATF. Since 2016, the ATF has allowed gun stores to request permission to store records electronically, but the new rule would make it the norm.
Of the more than 580 public comments on the proposal, nearly 90 percent opposed it on the grounds that digitized dealer records could become a tool for tracking gun ownership. One anonymous commenter warned of “a back door searchable database for future anti-gun administrations who want to take away guns.” (About 480 of the comments appeared to be variations of a single pre-written form, though we couldn’t identify its source.)
While the proposal calls for dealers’ electronic records to be searchable, it would require dealers closing their businesses to disable those search functions before turning over records to the ATF. The agency would then convert the records into static images that couldn’t be searched by name.
Fears expressed in the comments did not square with the sentiments of gun store owners who stood to benefit from the change. Bryce Grainger, a manager at The Gun Store in Conway, South Carolina, told The Trace it was hypocritical for gun owners to worry about retailers digitizing information that credit card companies and internet search providers already collect. “I would love to not retain as much paper as possible,” he said.
Dani Smith, the owner of SoDak Sports in Mitchell, South Dakota , said she also welcomed the change. When she purchased her store in 2012, the previous owner had to transfer 19 years of paper records to the ATF. He had to call in a special freight shipment because the load was too voluminous for regular parcel carriers to handle. Smith dreads having to do the same one day. “Electronic is the way of the world,” she told The Trace. “I find it odd that the ATF is still required to keep paper records in the first place.”
Photo by Rod Lamkey Jr./AP Photo
A separate proposal would allow dealers to dispose of sales records that are older than 20 or 30 years, depending on the agency’s final rule. That’s a significant change from the current policy, which requires dealers to retain their records indefinitely.
Nearly 80 percent of more than 5,700 comments opposed the change to the retention period. Many critics demanded the period be shorter. About 4,300 comments used nearly identical language circulated by Gun Owners of America, a gun rights advocacy group. Aidan Johnston, GOA’s director of federal affairs, said even though the proposal would reduce the amount of time records are kept, it would preserve a system that his organization views as akin to a national gun registry. “GOA will defend the privacy rights of gun owners against gun registration as the rule continues through the rulemaking process and will involve Congress and the courts as may be necessary,” he told The Trace.
Marianna Mitchem, who worked for 20 years at the ATF and led the agency’s Firearms and Explosives Industry Division, which manages industry enforcement programs, said the shortened retention policy could undermine law enforcement investigations. ATF figures show that more than 190,000 guns recovered from crime scenes between 2017 and 2021 had been purchased more than 20 years earlier. Under the new policy, records of those purchases would have been destroyed. “When you eliminate that lead, you have no way to know whether or not it would have been useful,” Mitchem said. “Why would you destroy evidence?” (Mitchem now works as an advisor for the gun violence prevention group Everytown, which provides grants to The Trace through its nonpolitical arm. You can find our donor transparency policy here, and our editorial independence policy here.)
Online Gun Sales and Small Dealers
The proposal to expand online gun sales prompted a rare alignment between gun businesses and gun safety advocates, both of whom warned that the change would make it harder for dealers to stop illegal purchases before they happen.
Under current law, online sellers are required to ship guns to retail storefronts, where buyers must show up in person and fill out background check paperwork to finalize their purchases. The storefronts typically charge a transfer fee — usually around $25 to $50 — for the service. The rule change does away with the in-person requirement. It authorizes sellers to conduct each customer’s identity verification and background check remotely, and then ship the gun directly to the customer’s door. If finalized, the rule could benefit the president’s son, Donald Trump Jr., who has invested in GrabAGun, a company that has dubbed itself the “Amazon of guns” and said it’s uniquely positioned to take advantage of the change.
According to The Trace’s analysis, there were more than 3,500 public comments on the proposal, and about three-quarters of them opposed it. The critics included the gun industry’s trade organization, the National Shooting Sports Foundation, which published a seven-page letter arguing that a pivot away from retail storefronts would make it next-to-impossible for dealers to spot suspicious buyers.
The new rule, the letter warns, “would be exploited by bad actors to conduct illegal straw purchases,” in which a legal customer buys guns on someone else’s behalf — usually someone prohibited from owning them. The letter cites an internal NSSF survey that found 72 percent of its members opposed the rule. Several of the respondents expressed fears that deepfakes and other AI-powered tools could be used to dupe the remote verification, and that traffickers could stand off-camera and force victims to buy guns on their behalf.
The Trace interviewed several gun store owners who echoed the NSSF’s sentiments. Chrystal Santos, the general manager of operations at Bow & Barrel Sportsman’s Center in Saint Robert, Missouri, said that over 14 years of business, her store clerks had turned away roughly 5 percent of their sales because of suspicions that customers were trying to break the law. “Over the counter, we have more of an ability to see if this is a sketchy transaction and stop it,” she said. “If we skip the counter, that’s not going to happen.”
Other dealers raised concerns about competing with massive online-only retailers, even as they emphasized their willingness to adapt. David Schuler, one of the owners at Wyoming Gun Fighter in Alpine, Wyoming, said that his profits largely depended on sales of accessories and ammunition — items customers often thought to purchase only after visiting the store in-person. He worried that a massive expansion of online business could threaten that income. “Guns have the lowest margin of any retail good in the sporting goods world,” he said.
Requiring Biological Sex on Background Check Forms
Another proposal drew objections because commenters viewed it as discriminating against transgender and nonbinary gun purchasers.
The proposal would require people filling out ATF background check forms to identify their biological sex as either male or female. It defines biological sex as an immutable classification that excludes gender identity.
Of the more than 3,500 comments on the proposal, about 60 percent supported it, and about 38 percent opposed it, The Trace found. Roughly half of the supportive comments used similar language, indicating a possible form submission.
The opposition included much less repetition. Some critics invoked the Second Amendment to argue against singling out transgender and nonbinary people. “‘Shall not be infringed’ includes transgender Americans,” one commenter wrote.
Another commenter argued that the requirement would confuse both buyers and shop owners and suggested removing the question. The commenter wrote that the Second Amendment “is for everyone and trying to trip up non-prohibited people is a disgrace.”
Who Needs a Dealer License
A vast majority of commenters supported a proposal to narrow who qualifies as a gun dealer, even though gun reform groups have vocally criticized the idea as a public safety threat since before it was announced.
The proposal would largely repeal a Biden administration rule that set out criteria for determining when someone is “engaged in the business” of selling firearms and thus must obtain a federal license and conduct background checks. People who sell guns only occasionally generally do not face those requirements.
About 80 percent of more than 700 comments supported the change, while fewer than one in five opposed it, The Trace’s analysis shows. Only about 20 commenters — including the gun safety groups Everytown, Brady, and Giffords — opposed the proposal from a gun safety perspective. There didn’t appear to be a significant campaign to encourage opponents to comment, but the Federal Register has published only about a third of the comments on this proposal, so the support we found may not reflect the full response.
Lindsay Nichols, policy director at Giffords, said the sheer volume of proposals forced her group to focus on responding to the ones it considered most dangerous. “This was 34 rules by one agency at one time, many of them on very technical issues,” she said. She suspects that some opponents may have been discouraged from commenting. “Ultimately, it’s true that the best comments in the world won’t matter if the decision makers are in the pocket of the gun lobby.”
Instead of a broad campaign, Tonya Schardt, senior counsel and director of state policy at Brady, said her organization encouraged more focused comments from lawmakers, state attorneys general, and law enforcement — groups that may have more sway. “The goal here was to make sure the comments were really substantive and force the ATF to try to respond, because the rules themselves are really confusing and dangerous,” she said. “They should be forced to explain themselves.”
Broad Support for the Other Proposals
The public response to the rest of the ATF’s package was generally more favorable. A proposal to make it easier to import training rounds received nearly 2,000 comments, and nearly all of them were positive. Same with the more than 4,000 comments responding to a proposal that would loosen restrictions on making pit stops like at a hotel or a gas station while traveling across state lines with a gun.
Johnston, with Gun Owners of America, said even though his group pushed back on some of the ATF’s proposed changes, it was happy with the Trump administration’s record on gun rights. “President Trump is leading the most pro-gun administration in recent United States history,” Johnston said, “and Gun Owners of America is incredibly grateful for all the work done to restore Second Amendment rights across every department and agency.”