The Trump administration formally revoked the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives’ (ATF) “zero-tolerance” for federal firearms licensees (FFL) policy.
“As of April 7, 2025, the Enhanced Regulatory Enforcement Policy, aka the Zero Tolerance Policy, was repealed, and Industry Operations inspections will no longer be held to these previously set guidelines. This page has been removed to comply with this new policy change,” read an update from the ATF.
The “zero-tolerance policy,” put in place by the Biden administration in June 2021, targeted supposedly “willful” violations from FFLs. In reality, it was a bureaucratic campaign against FFLs that sought to punish even the most innocuous of errors. The ultimate goal was to reduce American gun ownership by decreasing the number of FFLs.
“The NRA applauds Attorney General Bondi and Acting ATF Director Patel for repealing the misguided ‘Zero Tolerance’ Policy instituted by the Biden administration. Targeting lawful firearms dealers over minor clerical errors was a direct attack on the firearms industry and commerce protected by the Constitution. This reversal is another example of the Trump administration’s commitment to protecting and strengthening the Second Amendment rights of peaceable Americans,” said John Commerford, executive director of NRA Institute for Legislative Action (ILA). “We look forward to the ATF’s work to formally repeal the rules that expanded the definition of who is a firearms dealer and regulated stabilizing braces.”
Prior to its implementation, it was never made available for public comment or published in the federal register. Instead, it simply appeared on the White House website. NRA-ILA prophetically warned that this policy was, like others from the previous administration, ripe for abuse. “The new ‘zero-tolerance’ policy has a clear aim of reducing the number of federally licensed dealers, which will, in turn, make it more difficult for law-abiding Americans to exercise their Second Amendment rights,” reported NRA-ILA.
Unfortunately, these warnings were spot on. The “ATF will, absent extraordinary circumstances, initiate proceedings to revoke the license of any dealer that has committed a willful regulatory violation of the Gun Control Act (GCA) for specified violations,” read the policy.
FFLs had to worry about having licenses revoked for even one unintentional violation of the rules. This could include a paperwork error.
“While some of these may be serious violations that warrant revocation, many will be simple paperwork errors,” NRA-ILA reported. “Notably, ‘falsifying records’ is a very broad category that can include making simple errors on the Form 4473, and ‘failing to respond to a trace request’ could result from simply missing an attempted contact by ATF.”
Predictably, this led to an increased number of license revocations, which Biden’s ATF gloated about. According to a report, in 2023, the ATF revoked 157 federal firearms licenses following an inspection, nearly twice as many as the 88 licenses revoked in 2022. In the last six months of 2021, only five licenses were revoked.
As Charles C.W. Cooke wrote for America’s 1st Freedom last year, “As a legal matter, this approach is ridiculous: our laws exist to discipline people who behave in a dangerous or misanthropic manner, not to catch well-meaning actors who make a paperwork error. As an allocation of resources, however, it is a national disgrace. The ATF, like any other agency, has a limited budget and limited time. To use that budget and that time to go after the most-regulated, surveilled and documented businesses in the United States defies belief.”
Fortunately, the Trump administration has now undone yet another one of Biden’s disastrous policies.
