The trade organization representing thousands of businesses in the firearms industry is firmly opposed to the Trump administration’s plan to merge the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives with the Drug Enforcement Agency. The proposal hasn’t been widely reported outside of 2A circles, but the move to combine the two entities is a part of the White House’s Fiscal Year 2026 Budget Supplement Appendix.
According to the White House, a combined DEA/ATF would “most successfully, effectively, and efficiently continue the fight to eradicate the designated cartel FTOs [Foreign Terrorist Organizations] and seek to eliminate violent crime”, while also achieving “efficiencies in resources and case deconfliction.”
National Shooting Sports Foundation senior vice president and general counsel Lawrence Keane tells Bearing Arms, however, that such a move would be in the best interest of either gun owners or the industry.
Disbanding ATF is not a good idea. You know, DEA is much larger than ATF. So just imagine, whatever you call the entity, the Violent Crime Bureau or whatever; you now essentially have the ATF on steroids and supersized. What happens under an anti-gun the next time around? Now you have this behemoth that can be wielded against the industry and gun owners. We don’t think that’s advisable.
Keane says while the ATF definitely needs a course correction, reforms are already underway at the agency. He pointed specifically to new Assistant ATF Director Robert Cekada and counsel Robert Leider as positive personnel moves, and added that Acting Director Daniel Driscoll has taken substantive steps to end the Biden-era’s “zero tolerance” policy that shut down gun stores over things like minor clerical errors on Form 4473s. Keane worries that would change if the DEA and ATF become one agency, but his concerns go even deeper.
We do not want to see ATF done away with, because if you merge it into DEA the DEA culture will take over. We have no relationship with DEA, for obvious reasons, and frankly we don’t like the association of the lawful commerce of a protected right, the Second Amendment, being associated with drug dealing and drug cartels.
We used to say about merging the ATF with the FBI that if you did that then the FBI would be looking for a terrorist in every gun store. We don’t want the DEA looking for cartel members in every gun store. We think we need to fix the ATF, but it should remain an independent agency.
While the NSSF is worried about a supersized ATF, the organization also has concerns about the proposed budget for the ATF in fiscal year 2026. The budget proposed by the White House would slash ATF spending by about $400 million, and while Keane believes the agency’s budget can and should be slimmed down, he says the deep cuts proposed by the Trump administration could have a negative impact on both the industry and consumers.
From what I’ve heard in my conversations with ATF, the president’s proposed budget cuts so deep to the bone that a lot of these important services that the industry relies upon, that we have to have from ATF in order to operate lawfully, are gonna be cut and it’s gonna have an impact on NFA forms, import permits, license renewals, and things like that. Stuff that’s not very sexy, kind of behind the curtain nuts and bolts stuff, but they’re still important. It matters.
Zeroing out the ATF’s budget, merging the agency, or shuttering it completely doesn’t chance the fact that some entity has to enforce the provisions within the NFA, the Gun Control Act, and other federal statutes regulating the firearms industry. Keane argues that it’s better to deal with the devil you know, especially when fundamental reforms are underway.
Keane adds that Congress needs to act as well by adopting Sen. Joni Ernst’s Fighting Irrational Regulatory Enforcement to Avert Retailers’ Misfortune (FIREARM) Act, which the NSSF believes offers a number of structural reforms to the agency.
- Creates a safe harbor for FFLs to self-report violations, so they can correct any accidental errors;
- Requires the ATF to work collaboratively with FFLs to fix violations and help avoid future violations;
- Addresses the “willfulness” issue by defining it to mean a voluntary, intentional violation of a known legal duty achieved through specific intent or deliberate planning, excludes previous conduct, and creates a rebuttal if the conduct is not willful; and
- Allows for direct judicial review of license revocations to avoid the ATF from serving as both the judge and prosecutor.
I think it’s great that the ATF is under the microscope of the Trump administration, especially after the agency was essentially turned into a gun control group with federal law enforcement powers by Joe Biden. But we need to make sure that efforts to reform the agency don’t inadvertently make things worse for gun owners and the firearms industry that plays a critical role in our ability to exercise our Second Amendment rights.
Check out the entire conversation with NSSF’s Larry Keane in the video window below, which also features his take on SCOTUS sidestepping semi-auto bans and Citi’s move to rescind its discriminatory policy against gun makers and sellers.
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