Anti-Second Amendment groups are a little like Pavlov's Dog. When they see any indication of a state government, to say nothing of the feds, liberalizing gun laws, they start frothing at the mouth about the carnage that must, in their minds, ensue.
So the fact that the Feds have changed the focus of the Department of Justice, and at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (BATFE), is going to cause some upset stomachs among the anti-gun mob. And the predictions of catastrophe go without saying — which tells us a little something about how the Left views law-abiding citizens.
The tossin' turnin' tummies are a given.
But what about the predictions?
Robert Cekada, Trump's nominee to run the BATFE, set out a very different mission than the bureaucracy had during the Obama or Biden regimes — or, really, any time during its existence:
During his confirmation hearing, career ATF agent Robert Cekada said “ATF’s mission is not to burden lawful gun owners or undermine the Second Amendment. The right to keep and bear arms is a constitutional guarantee, and I’m committed to protecting and preserving it.” That was a breath of regulatory fresh air, but it was also pretty much what you’d expect a nominee to say in front of a GOP-majority committee.
And by bureaucratic standards, Cekada (and the DOJ at large) has been pretty diligent about delivering on that promise.
And you just know the grabbers were not going to be amused. The Brady and Giffords organizations predicted, as usual, blood in the streets:
This week Brady, GIFFORDS, and Everytown for Gun Safety submitted more than a dozen organizational public comments opposing federal proposals that would significantly weaken firearms regulations and increase the risk of gun violence nationwide. The organizations warned that the proposed rules — the bulk of which were announced in April by the Department of Justice and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) with the backing of the gun industry — would endanger communities...
...“Eliminating in-person background checks. Letting gun sellers destroy sales records. Loosening restrictions on highly lethal firearms. Letting reckless gun sellers stay in the business of selling guns to the public. These proposals would strip away decades of protections that save lives and hold the gun industry accountable. And let me be clear: the consequences will be devastating. One proposed rule even explicitly warns that implementation could result in ‘mass casualty events.’ That's not a prediction we should accept. It's a warning we should heed. Americans deserve leaders who measure success by lives saved, not guns sold. This November, they'll have the chance to hold their leaders accountable for that choice,” said Brady President Kris Brown.
If this sounds familiar, it's because...it's familiar. It's the same news release that they put out every time any gun law gets liberalized anywhere. I'd be amazed if they don't have AI writing them by now:
The boy cries "wolf" again: Brady and Giffords claim that the proposed ATF rules will cause crime to increase: https://t.co/JvKmffIeaU pic.twitter.com/qQFNQ8Iew1
— Rob Romano (@2Aupdates) August 7, 2026
But...are they ever right?
Kostas Moros has the receipts:
As you might expect, our friends in the gun control industry aren’t happy about ATF’s proposed rule changes. They have a problem, though. Crime in America is at historical lows and continues to fall. At the same time, gun sales remain strong and more people are carrying than ever before. Even The New York Times ran a favorable piece Friday on an armed citizen who saved lives by opening fire on a spree shooter.
This presents a real problem for the civilian disarmament industrial complex. They only have so many tools to use in order to get their names in the media and continue to raise more cash. Their repeated apocalyptic predictions of soaring violence and chaos in the streets couldn’t have been more off the mark.
Moros runs down the list of what the ATF is working to deliver.
- Revising form 4473, including allowing electronic forms and increasing the time NICS checks are valid
- Allowing FFLs to keep electronic records
- Replacing the indefinite retention mandate on 4473s with definite time periods of 20 or 30 years
- Allowing “non-over-the-counter” gun sales by FFLs to residents of the same state
- Repealing the interstate NFA transport notice requirement for trips under one year, with all others no longer requiring approval before travel
- Joint NFA registration for married couples
- Clarify that “common, reasonably necessary activities during travel” are covered by FOPA transportation protection, i.e. you can stop for lunch or to use the bathroom while traveling through anti-gun states without the risk of going to prison
- Allowing the import of dual-use frames, receivers, and barrels
- Clarifying that “training rounds” aren’t ammunition, i.e. Simunitions are civilian-legal again
Most of which are simple record-keeping changes so that the BATFE spends less time and effort nagging the bejeebers out of law-abiding gun owners and gun dealers. And it's the stuff that Giffords/Brady (perhaps I'll shorten it to "Briffords" in the future) are getting the vapors about.
The change in the weather at BATFE and the DOJ highlight 30-plus years of steady advances for gun rights in the U.S., notwithstanding some high-profile holdouts like Virginia and Colorado — advances that the gun grabbers have been carping about nonstop (and getting paid well to do so).
And yet even the New York Times is saying the quiet part these days (emphasis added by me):
Many of the numbers we’ve cataloged in recent weeks — longer commutes, rising traffic deaths, dwindling housing supply — have been moving in the wrong direction. This week, though, we turn to the very troubling subject of murder, but with some strikingly positive news.
The U.S. has generally seen homicides fall since the sky-high murder rates of the 1990s. But when the pandemic hit, lethal violence climbed in many cities. It’s plunging again in recent years, and in some places, it’s hitting record lows.
No one who pays close attention to crime rates takes this news for granted — violence could rise again at any time. But credit for the lower murder rate is going in part to new approaches to violence prevention that have taken root in communities across the country.
The Times doesn't mention that since the '90s, the number of guns in civilian hands has multiplied. If guns in the hands of law-abiding citizens were correlated with homicide, the trend would be going the other way.
It feels like I have to write this a lot. It's because I do. Every few years, a new generation of gun grabbers comes to the fore, and needs to be smacked back down by the same facts, every time.
And so we smack.
