The Trump administration is proposing almost three dozen new rules to scale back gun regulations that proliferated during the Biden administration.
The 34 rules placed in the Federal Register on Wednesday included reversing a 2024 Biden administration rule that attempted to force firearms dealers to run background checks on buyers at gun shows. Gun control advocates called this the “gun show loophole.”
Another change ends the 2023 Biden administration rule that restricted pistol braces. Pistol braces are attachments that allow a person holding a pistol to keep the weapon against their shoulder. The Biden administration justified the regulation by claiming the attachment turned the pistol into a barreled rifle that is subject to stronger regulation.
Earlier this week, the Senate confirmed Robert Cekada as director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, or ATF.
“ATF’s mission is to protect public safety and enforce the law—and these reforms reflect our commitment to doing that through regulations that are clear, legally sound, and narrowly tailored to that purpose,” Cekada said in a statement. “Our enforcement focus from here on out is on willful violators and criminal actors, not inadvertent compliance issues by responsible owners and licensees.”
The focus of the proposed rules, now open for public comment, is to scale back enforcement against licensed gun dealers and gun owners who make paperwork errors, and to emphasize a focus on criminals.
The Gun Owners of America, a pro–Second Amendment group, had filed several lawsuits against the federal government opposing regulations, but “that all went away with this new ATF director,” GOA national spokesman Stephen Willeford said.
The top priorities for the GOA were doing away with the pistol brace regulation and reversing the Biden rule that categorized anyone selling a firearm as being in the business of selling firearms.
But, he said, the changes have come later than promised, which he blamed on former Attorney General Pam Bondi, a former Florida attorney general.
“The Trump administration told us in the first week they would undo all of the Biden administration rulings in the first week, not laws but rulings,” Willeford, co-author of “A Town Called Sutherland Springs: Faith and Heroism Through Tragedy,” told the Daily Signal. “We were worried when Pam Bondi became attorney general. She was never pro-2A in Florida.”
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche asserted the Trump administration is taking a different path than the prior administration.
“The Second Amendment is not a second-class right,” Blanche said in a statement. “This Department of Justice is ending the weaponization of federal authority against law-abiding gun owners. We will continue to vigorously defend their rights as the Constitution demands.”
The rules include repealing existing regulations, modernizing firearms regulations, reducing burdens on gun owners and gun dealers, and providing legal clarifications.
The changes are a response to President Donald Trump’s Executive Order 14206, “Protecting Second Amendment Rights,” signed in February 2025, geared at ending “the federal government’s violation of Americans’ fundamental Second Amendment right to protect themselves, their families, and their freedoms.”
Gun control advocates are upset with the changes. Nick Wilson, senior director of public safety at the Center for American Progress, took aim at scrapping the gun show regulation.
“The Trump administration is once again prioritizing the interests of the gun industry over the safety of American families,” Wilson said in a statement Thursday. “The new proposed rule guts a key provision of the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act of 2022—essentially getting rid of near-universal background checks. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche attempted to spin this as ‘the most comprehensive regulatory reform package in the history’ of ATF, but this is really an irresponsible effort to strip away lifesaving protections in order to maximize gun industry profits.”
