Po Murray says gun-control advocates should reclaim the term “gun control.” That honesty should also extend to the policy results. iStock-1365229422
Po Murray lives in Newtown, Connecticut. She is the cofounder of the Newtown Action Alliance, one of the gun control groups formed in the aftermath of the heinous murders at Sandy Hook Elementary School. From what I could tell, Ms. Murray is cut from the same cloth as the rest: heavy on the emotions; light on the facts.
“I embraced the language many in our movement adopted,” she wrote. I spoke about “gun safety” and “gun violence prevention” because we were told these terms would resonate more broadly, reduce polarization, and help us reach people who might otherwise shut down when they heard ‘gun control.’”
She has come to a new conclusion: Strip away the euphemisms; call it what it is.
Good idea! Now let’s apply the same thinking to assault weapons, large capacity magazines, and gun violence.
Ms. Murray continues: “I no longer believe this is a choice between one set of words or another. I believe we need all of them, and we need to use them more intentionally.
“At the same time, we need to be clear about what this work is ultimately about. It is about freedom. Not abstract freedom, but the freedom to live our daily lives without fear. The freedom to send our children to school, to gather in our communities, to worship, to work, and to simply exist without the constant threat of gun violence.”
There is no such thing as freedom to live our lives without fear. There is also no right to live “without the constant threat of ‘gun violence.’”
No government or society on earth could make such promises. Life is not sanitized for our protection.
It is, however, quite possible to live a long and productive life without the “constant threat of gun violence.” Simply ignore the blow-up bogeymen and papier-mâché tigers created by gun control fans.
Better, do some independent research. It’s like firing a howitzer into a house of cards.
Washington state got on the gun control bandwagon about 12 years ago and has been going gangbusters ever since.
In 2015, Seattle’s murder rate was 3.49 per 100,000 population. In 2020, it had risen to 7.16 per 100,000 population, more than twice the 2015 rate. After about 2021, homicide rates began falling. Seattle’s rate rose seven percent.
No fudging here: Population courts were verified with the U.S. Census Bureau; offense counts were sourced from state statistics and individual law enforcement agencies. Our data is spin-free.
By all the data, gun control does not work. At best, it’s irrelevant; at worst, it’s a joke.
Over the years, I have compared the gun-grabbers’ remedies to the snake oil nostrums hawked by fast-talking hucksters in the Old West traveling medicine shows. How else would you describe measures that ignore virtually every factor impacting this so-called ‘epidemic’ or can’t be enforced because critical information is missing, and it’s a violation of federal law to gather it?
A point to consider: In 2016, voters in Nevada barely passed a referendum in favor of universal background checks. Only one county in Nevada passed the referendum, but that one county was Clark County, which includes Las Vegas.
Everytown for Gun Safety volunteered to assist Nevada legislators in drafting a bill. It eventually passed. But Everytown screwed up: they didn’t check to see who processed the background checks and specified running all inquiries through the FBI’s NICS system.
Unfortunately for the ban fans, the state of Nevada had set up its processing when the background check system was first being implemented. The state’s choice was the Nevada Department of Public Safety.
The FBI refused to take over processing, so the state had to wait two years for the next legislative session to set things right.
Did the gun control zealots take their lumps and retire to consider their error? Nope: they sued the governor and state attorney general because they refused to implement a law that could literally not be enforced.
As Po Murray said, this is all about freedom. Just not the freedom she envisions.
Bill Cawthon first became a gun owner 55 years ago. He has been an active advocate for Americans’ civil liberties for more than a decade. He is the information director for the Second Amendment Society of Texas.
The Supreme Court of Maryland ruled that Montgomery County exceeded its authority with key portions of its firearms ordinance. iStock-1327766990
The Supreme Court of Maryland handed Maryland Shall Issue and other challengers a significant, but not total, victory in their challenge to Montgomery County’s sweeping firearms ordinance. The lawsuit was commenced in 2021.
The Supreme Court of Maryland issued its decision today in our challenge to the Montgomery County ordinance that basically banned carry by permit holders through out the County. On that issue we completely prevailed and the County lost. Specifically the Court held that the…
In 2021, Montgomery County, Maryland, the State’s most populous county, enacted an ordinance that severely infringed on rights protected by the Second Amendment. Maryland has a significant set of preemption statutes that prevent local governments from interfering with state firearms law.
Maryland Shall Issue filed two lawsuits challenging the ordinance in different ways: one in federal court and the other in state court. In December of 2023, the Circuit Court for Montgomery County granted Summary Judgement in favor of the Shall Issue lawsuit in state court. The County appealed the ruling to the Appellate Court of Maryland. On January 24, 2025, the Appellate Court ruled the Circuit Court had erred and remanded the case back to the Circuit Court. The case, now named Montgomery County v. Engage Armament, was appealed by Maryland Shall Issue to the Maryland Supreme Court.
The post by Maryland Shall Issue explaining the Maryland Supreme Court’s ruling quotes the Court on the County ordinance. The Supreme Court wrote this:
“is not a local law because of its application to holders of State-issued wear-and-carry permits traveling on public highways who cross within 100 yards of a place of public assembly.”
The Court did not treat that portion as a valid local ordinance. It held that, as currently constructed, § 57-11(a) is not a “local law” because it burdens state-issued wear-and-carry permit holders traveling on public highways through Montgomery County.
The “local ordinance” banning concealed carry within 100 yards of a “place of public assembly” effectively banned it.
Most major roads and highways transited through areas within 100 yards of the multitude of places the County ordinance designated as places of public assembly.
Maryland Shall Issue also posted that the Maryland Supreme Court ruled Montgomery County’s ban on “ghost guns” was preempted by Maryland law “to the extent it includes firearms that have been serialized in compliance with federal and State law.”
On the ghost-gun provisions, the Court held that Montgomery County cannot refuse to recognize firearms serialized by federally licensed firearms dealers in compliance with federal and state law. The Court also noted that the County disavowed any reading of its ordinance that would bar transport of an unserialized firearm for the purpose of serialization.
The Maryland Supreme Court was reported to have ruled that a section of the County’s ordinance was preempted, as the County attempted to ban a:
“broad swath of otherwise lawful (and constitutionally protected) conduct by adults merely because it occurs in the presence of a minor, without any apparent connection to whether that activity might result in minors gaining unsupervised access to those firearms.”
Exactly which parts of the Montgomery County ordinance remain in effect after the Maryland Supreme Court ruling is unclear at this time.
In the federal appeal, the Fourth Circuit had scheduled an argument for January 23, 2024, but removed the case from the argument calendar. The Maryland Supreme Court later noted that the Fourth Circuit granted Montgomery County’s motion to hold the appeal in abeyance pending the state-court decision.
Dean Weingarten has been a peace officer, a military officer, was on the University of Wisconsin Pistol Team for four years, and was first certified to teach firearms safety in 1973. He taught the Arizona concealed carry course for fifteen years until the goal of Constitutional Carry was attained. He has degrees in meteorology and mining engineering, and retired from the Department of Defense after a 30 year career in Army Research, Development, Testing, and Evaluation.
The New York City Comptroller recommends dropping ShotSpotter, a controversial gunshot detection system with an alarming failure rate. iStock-1342530364
In March of 2025, Everytown, the activist organization created with considerable funding from multi-billionaire Michael Bloomberg, launched a website called EveryShot. EveryShot is an artificial intelligence tool using ChatGPT-40 mini to search for and list, according to Everytown, a collection of incidents in the 50 U.S. states involving shootings with a firearm or the brandishing of a firearm. Specifically excluded are BB guns, pellet guns, toy guns, or events that are fictional. A filter is used to exclude duplicates. The tool often shows multiple sources for a single event. The tool can flag events when there is uncertainty or discrepancies the flag brings the attention of a human for review. The tool updates the database twice a week.
In the Terms of Use, Everytown states the results can be “incomplete, inaccurate, offensive, or otherwise unpredictable”. In this correspondent’s use of the tool, such a description is correct.
The tool has been developed by Everytown. Everytown is strongly biased toward greater political control over the ownership and use of firearms. It is not surprising there are no categories of firearms use under the categories of “Intent” listed as s justified homicides. There is no category of “Incident Type” listed as self-defense.
In “Relationship to Shooter” there are no categories for “gang member”, “criminal”, “drug dealer”, or even “stranger” or “attacker”. There are only Self, Friend, various family members, Intimate Partner, Bystander, and “Not Reported”.
The description of the sources limits them to occurring in “one of the 50 US states”; the District of Columbia, a United States federal territory, is included.
As an experiment, this correspondent chose to look at all the incidents reported under the categories of Firearm Type – “Machine Gun” and Firearm Ownership – “Legal”. Such incidents are extremely rare. EveryShot reported six incidents from January 1 through April 21.
It appeared to this reporter that EveryShot was mistaken in all six incidents. In all six incidents, the “machine gun” was an illegally possessed firearm. Three of the incidents explicitly identified the illegal machine gun as a “Glock switch”. One incident identified the offending firearm(s) as “illegal conversion devices”. One incident did not identify the firearm, except as a “machine gun”, but there was a charge of “felon in possession,” which indicated the firearm was illegally owned. The sixth incident identified the firearm as a MAC 11, but careful reading showed it to be Masterpiece Arms Grim Reaper, a semi-automatic replica of the MAC. In that case, the firearm itself was not a machine gun, and it was illegal for the person to possess it, as they were charged with being a felon in possession.
March 30, 2026 – Gray’s Hill, SC, Possession of a machine gun, felon in possession, no explanation of the offending firearm.
There are other quirks in the EveryShot AI engine. Under “Brandishing,” the engine lists 92 incidents. 92 are listed under “fatal”, 0 incidents are listed under non-fatal, and 0 incidents are listed under “other”. The engine must have more categories than “fatal”, “non-fatal”, and “other”, because total incidents are listed as 1,560, many times greater than the total of “fatal”, “non-fatal”, and “other”, which only comes to 92. Categories available other than the three mentioned were not obvious.
Such are the quirks that EveryTown warns against as potential flaws in the EveryShot AI construct.
This does not mean EveryShot is useless. It means the numbers are, at best, a flawed program’s interpretation of news stories, which are highly biased by the way the searches are constructed.
Another reason to be cautious is this: It is not disputed that the most common fatalities involving firearms in the USA are suicides. They account for about two-thirds of all fatalities involving firearms. Because of the limitations of the publicly available data from the sources used by EveryShot, suicides only account for about 9% of fatalities by firearm. It appears that suicides are not covered by the media anywhere near completely.
If you use EveryShot, be aware of the limitations. Keep in mind the cautions put forward by Everytown about its use. Do not consider the statistics to be factual or accurate, because the EverShot AI has many limitations.
Dean Weingarten has been a peace officer, a military officer, was on the University of Wisconsin Pistol Team for four years, and was first certified to teach firearms safety in 1973. He taught the Arizona concealed carry course for fifteen years until the goal of Constitutional Carry was attained. He has degrees in meteorology and mining engineering, and retired from the Department of Defense after a 30 year career in Army Research, Development, Testing, and Evaluation.
DOJ and ATF announced a 34-rule reform package aimed at reducing regulatory burdens on gun owners and the firearms industry. AmmoLand was present for the signing. IMG Jim Grant
Yesterday, United States Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche invited AmmoLand News to witness the signing of the most comprehensive Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) rules package in the agency’s history.
The rules were substantial. They included eliminating the need to mark National Firearms Act (NFA) items when built from an existing receiver. Another change allows Gun Control Act (GCA) firearms to be shipped directly to a buyer’s door from a federal firearms licensee (FFL) in the same state. Many companies, such as Palmetto State Armory (PSA), have a network of FFLs in each state to ship suppressors to purchasers’ doors. It wouldn’t be a heavy lift to use those same FFLs for GCA firearms.
These changes were mostly positive. Newly confirmed Robert Cekada signed each rules package just minutes after being confirmed by the Senate.
The signing of the 34 rules marks the first step in reforming a Bureau many view as out of control. Although the changes were positive, a few changes were missing from the initial rules. The most noticeable missing change was a modification to the frames and receiver rule.
Court cases around the country have been paused for months, awaiting a new rule. Many believed it would be unveiled yesterday. That did not happen. Earlier this month, Justice Department lawyers stated that the ATF would not change the frames-and-receiver rule. They quickly backpedaled, then told opposition lawyers that the rule is still under review and that a new rule would be forthcoming.
Another welcome change is that the ATF’s secret database of out-of-business records will no longer be kept forever. There will be a fixed period of time before these records in Martinsburg, West Virginia, will be destroyed. We do not yet know what that time period will be. It appears that the ATF’s top brass have not decided. Gun owners want the immediate destruction of the database. They view it as an illegal gun registry that is expressly forbidden by Congress.
Sources inside the ATF said they wanted to push further, but wanted to make sure they could defend their actions in court and politically.
The ATF and DOJ did not address the killing of Bryan Malinowski. On March 19, 2024, ATF agents raided Malinowski’s home and killed him. The airport executive for Little Rock airport was a lifelong firearms collector and sold guns from his private collection at gun shows. The ATF believed he might be “engaged in the business” of selling firearms without an FFL. The raid was to gather evidence to use against him, but ended up in tragedy.
To date, no one has been held responsible for the botched raid, raising concerns from the firearms community about the history of lack of accountability inside the ATF dating back to the 80’s with botched raids at Waco and Ruby Ridge.
The ATF’s proposed changes show a willingness to work with the firearms community and industry, a major shift from the past. Two years ago, AmmoLand News was supposed to attend a meeting at ATF headquarters, only to have our invitations revoked the morning of the proposed meeting.
This time, not only was AmmoLand News invited, but so were representatives from Gun Owners of America (GOA), the Second Amendment Foundation (SAF), National Associations for Gun Rights (NAGR), National Rifle Associations (NRA), American Suppressor Association (ASA), and the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF).
Whether the changes will continue remains to be seen. President Ronald Reagan once said, “Trust, but verify,” and that is exactly what AmmoLand News plans on doing.
Mr. Crump is an NRA instructor and a constitutional activist. John has written about firearms, interviewed people from all walks of life, and on the Constitution. John lives in Northern Virginia with his wife and sons. Follow him on X at @right2bear or at www.crumpy.com.
German ‘Waffenbesitzkarte für Sportschützen,’ a firearms possession card for sport shooters, shown with ammunition for handguns and long guns. iStock-1208764235
“Saxony’s Interior Ministry wants to revoke hunting licenses of AfD [Alternative for Germany] supporters,” Berliner Zeitung reported Sunday. “Anyone in Saxony who is an AfD member or attends party events risks losing their firearms license. A new decree now reverses the burden of proof.”
“Saxony’s Interior Ministry confirmed the existence of the measure, issued last July, but declined to publish it, describing it as an ‘internal document,’” RT explained, noting the reason was the AfD Party has been classified as a “confirmed right-wing extremist” organization due to its “anti-immigration platform and oppos[ition to] sanctions on Russia and support for Ukraine.” A challenge to that designation was rejected on appeal, showing the establishment fears a rapidly growing populist movement that reflects voter dissatisfaction with current government policies.
The requirement to “demonstrate reliability” and burden of proof is on AfD members “to show clear distancing from the party’s positions,” the report explains, further noting, “simply having no criminal record is insufficient.”
That such prior restraints can be codified into “law” is made inevitable by German weapons laws, among the strictest in Europe, which do not recognize a right to keep and bear arms, but instead read like a wish list for U.S. gun prohibitionists to template off of.
Disarming anyone disfavored by the state is one of the oldest power guarantors devised by governments, and this happening in Germany recalls another set of laws imposed within the lifetimes of people still living. From the Nazi Weapons Law of November 11, 1938, Regulations Against Jews’ Possession of Weapons:
“Jews (§ 5 of the First Regulations of the German Citizenship Law of 14 November 1935, Reichsgesetzblatt 1, p. 1332) are prohibited from acquiring, possessing, and carrying firearms and ammunition, as well as truncheons or stabbing weapons. Those now possessing weapons and ammunition are at once to turn them over to the local police authority.”
That AfD, characterized by its critics as Nazis and neo-Nazis, is now being discriminated against with a virtual clone of Nazi Weapons Law, is a valid point to make, and one the political establishment and its media propagandists will, naturally, not admit to. And that’s reflected by Democrats increasingly employing Antifa-type slurs and smearing Republicans in general, and MAGA supporters in particular, as “Nazis” and “fascists.”
What’s being buried in those lies are two inconvenient truths.
The late UK Liberal Party supporter George Watson definitively debunked the former in his landmark Hitler and the Socialist Dream, documenting:
“It is now clear beyond all reasonable doubt that Hitler and his associates believed they were socialists, and that others, including democratic socialists, thought so too.”
“Do not imagine that by tearing up my membership card in the Socialist Party you can forbid my socialist faith or prevent me from continuing to work for the cause of socialism and the revolution”
As the Founders’ Republic approaches its midterm elections and Semiquincentennial, it’s important to note the Framers rejected European tyranny and brought forth instead a form of government centered on the individual that included what the collectivists deceptively promise but never deliver: the most egalitarian power-sharing arrangement ever devised. That, of course, was the right of the people to keep and bear arms.
As it stands now, there appears to be a good chance unthinking and uninformed heirs of liberty, that is, useful idiots, stand ready to demand a new and dangerous era of socialist collectivism through a “tyranny of the majority.” Who thinks for a minute a Democrat supermajority — with the unchallengeable ability to pass whatever gun edicts they want and have them upheld by a packed Supreme Court — won’t make disarming political opposition, that is, “extremists,” a priority?
David Codrea is the winner of multiple journalist awards for investigating/defending the RKBA and a long-time gun owner rights advocate who defiantly challenges the folly of citizen disarmament. He blogs at “The War on Guns: Notes from the Resistance,” is a regularly featured contributor to Firearms News, and posts on Twitter: @dcodrea and Facebook.
ATF’s new reform package would roll back or revise several firearm regulations affecting pistol braces, bump stocks, FFLs, and NFA gun owners. IMG Jim Grant
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives has announced what it calls a “New Era of Reform,” and for once, the agency is not leading with a new way to turn ordinary gun owners or small FFLs into regulatory targets.
ATF says the new reform package is aimed at “transparency, accountability, and partnership with the firearms industry, gun owners, and the public.” More importantly, the agency says it is moving toward regulations grounded in “clear statutory authority” while reducing unnecessary burdens on law-abiding businesses and citizens. That is exactly where ATF should have been all along.
This is not the repeal of the National Firearms Act we all want. It does not abolish the ATF, and gun owners should not pretend a federal press release equals restored liberty. But it is a major shift away from the Biden-era model of treating every paperwork error, brace-equipped pistol, and private seller as a potential federal case.
ATF lists 34 regulatory actions under five headings: Repeal, Modernize, Reduce Burden, Clarify, and Align. The page calls the package “proposed rulemakings,” but the list actually includes proposed rules, final rules, a direct final rule, and an interim final rule. That matters because some items are still open fights, while others are being moved into effect through final agency action.
The most obvious win for gun owners is ATF’s proposal to formally remove the Biden-era pistol brace rule. ATF now says it is proposing to rescind the 2023 stabilizing brace regulatory changes after multiple federal courts found the rule violated the Administrative Procedure Act and after the rule was enjoined, stayed, or vacated across numerous jurisdictions. In plain English, the agency is finally admitting what gun owners already knew: the brace rule was legally defective and largely unenforceable.
That rule threatened millions of Americans who lawfully owned brace-equipped firearms. It was never about violent crime. It was about bureaucratic reclassification. ATF tried to take a common firearm accessory, rewrite the meaning of federal law, and force ordinary people into NFA registration or felony exposure. Courts stopped it. Now ATF is moving to clean up the wreckage.
ATF is also revising its “engaged in the business” rule. This one deserves careful attention. The agency says it will rescind certain regulatory changes because they failed to produce the anticipated outcomes in FFL applications, licensing actions, forfeitures, or other enforcement metrics. However, ATF says it will retain the definition Congress enacted through the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act.
That means this is a rollback of ATF’s extra regulatory overreach, not a full undoing of Congress’s statutory language. Gun owners should welcome the retreat, but not confuse it with complete victory. The government still has too much room to blur the line between someone liquidating part of a private collection and someone actually operating as a firearms dealer.
ATF is also removing bump-stock language from its machine gun definitions after the Supreme Court’s decision in Garland v. Cargill. ATF says the final rule removes two sentences from three regulatory definitions of “machine gun” that had incorporated bump stocks, aligning the regulations with the Court’s holding that semiautomatic rifles equipped with bump stocks do not meet the statutory definition of machine gun under the NFA.
That is another important admission: agencies do not get to rewrite criminal law because they dislike a firearm accessory.
Finally, ATF proposes to remove the requirement that FFLs post and provide the Youth Handgun Safety Act notice. The agency says the law has been in place for more than 30 years and is readily accessible, making the old 1998 posting and notification mandate an unnecessary burden.
The Modernize group focuses heavily on Form 4473, electronic records, retention periods, and how FFLs verify each other’s licenses.
ATF proposes to update Form 4473 and its implementing regulations by streamlining identity and residency verification, increasing the period during which a NICS check remains valid, clarifying background-check exceptions, allowing electronic notice, and authorizing electronic forms, auto-population, and digital attachments. This could potentially lead to online sales being brought into a more streamlined process for gun owners.
That is the kind of modernization the industry has needed for years. Gun stores are not stuck in 1968. Their compliance systems should not be either.
ATF is also proposing to formally authorize FFLs to generate, store, and maintain required records electronically, including Form 4473 and Acquisition & Disposition records. The agency notes that many licensees have already operated this way through blanket or individual variances, but the new rule would codify it into regulation.
The bigger issue is record retention. ATF says it wants to replace indefinite retention of FFL records with definite retention periods. The agency is considering either 20 or 30 years for Form 4473 and A&D records, including records at the Out-of-Business Records Center. It also proposes 90-day retention for certain private-party transfer and voluntary firearm handler check records, and five-year retention for multiple-sale reports, theft/loss reports, and incomplete 4473s.
That is better than indefinite retention, but gun owners should still be clear-eyed. The federal government should not be allowed to quietly build a permanent backdoor registry through “records management.” A fixed retention period is an improvement, but the details matter.
ATF is also issuing a direct final rule allowing FFLs to use ATF’s online FFL eZ Check system instead of requiring a certified paper copy of another licensee’s FFL. This is common sense. It is 2026. A federal agency should not require paper relics when it operates the verification website itself.
The agency also proposes to modernize non-over-the-counter sales by allowing FFLs to sell to same-state residents through updated verification procedures. That could give dealers and buyers more flexibility while still requiring identification and Brady Act background checks.
The Reduce Burden group contains some of the most practical changes for NFA owners.
ATF proposes to update Form 5320.20 rules for interstate transport of NFA firearms. For short-term transport of 365 days or fewer, owners would no longer have to submit advance notice or wait for ATF approval before leaving. For long-term transport or permanent relocation, owners would still submit notice but would not have to wait for ATF approval before transporting.
This is a serious improvement. Law-abiding NFA owners should not need permission slips from Washington to travel with firearms they already lawfully registered.
ATF is also proposing joint NFA registration for spouses. Under current practice, many married couples use a trust so both spouses can lawfully possess an NFA firearm. ATF says the new proposal would allow married couples to register jointly as makers or transferees without creating a trust, and transfers between spouses under that joint registration would not be treated as separate NFA transfers.
That is a real-world fix for ordinary families. A husband and wife should not have to hire a lawyer and create a trust just to avoid stepping into a federal trap inside their own home.
ATF also proposes to remove the CLEO notification requirement for NFA applications and responsible-person questionnaires. The agency says the requirement has faced sustained legal challenges and has not achieved its intended public-safety outcomes.
Again, that is what gun owners have said for years. The CLEO notice requirement was mostly symbolic. It burdened lawful applicants while doing nothing to stop criminals, who are not lining up to file NFA paperwork in the first place.
ATF is also proposing to clarify interstate firearm transport under the Firearms Owners’ Protection Act. The rule would recognize that normal travel activities — overnight stops, refueling, vehicle maintenance, emergency stops, and medical treatment — are part of “transport” and covered by FOPA protections.
That matters because hostile states and localities have long tried to punish peaceful travelers for ordinary interruptions during interstate travel. A flat tire or hotel stop should not erase a citizen’s federal protection.
Other burden-reduction changes include simplifying certain machine-gun transfers between qualified licensees for government demonstrations or when a licensee is going out of business, clarifying that SOT payments are owed per business activity at a location rather than per overlapping GCA license, and removing an obsolete triplicate filing requirement for importing plastic explosives.
The Clarify group is broad, but several items have direct firearms industry and gun-owner implications.
ATF proposes to clarify activities in Foreign Trade Zones and Customs Bonded Warehouses, expand lawful FFL activity beyond mere storage in those facilities, and reduce ambiguity for importers and licensees. It also proposes to clarify that certain dual-use barrels, frames, and receivers may be imported when a sporting configuration exists, and that once lawfully imported, those parts may be incorporated into sporting, non-sporting, or NFA-regulated firearms if other federal laws are followed.
That is important because “sporting purposes” restrictions have long been used as a backdoor gun-control tool. Any clarification that narrows arbitrary import games is welcome, though the larger “sporting purposes” framework remains a problem Congress should eventually address.
ATF also proposes to clarify that certain training rounds — inert, marking, or simulated-projectile products used for training — are not “ammunition” under the Gun Control Act or Arms Export Control Act, provided the round is not for a firearm.
The agency is also proposing a formal process for converting temporary imports of firearms or defense articles into permanent imports, rather than forcing importers to re-export, reimport, or destroy items when temporary authorization expires.
For NFA makers, ATF proposes to allow people who make NFA firearms by altering existing firearms to adopt the original manufacturer’s markings instead of adding redundant markings. That is another practical fix. If the firearm already has the original manufacturer and serial-number markings required by law, forcing extra markings can be unnecessary and confusing.
ATF also proposes to clarify that a person traveling on a common or contract carrier while maintaining direct control over a firearm or ammunition has not “delivered” that firearm or ammunition to the carrier.
The agency is also revising definitions tied to “adjudicated as a mental defective” and “committed to a mental institution.” ATF says it would modernize the term “mental defective,” associate it with “intellectually disabled,” and clarify that a person receiving assistance in only one functional area, such as financial management, is not prohibited on that basis alone. It also clarifies that certain dangerousness commitments or findings of not guilty by reason of insanity fall under “committed to a mental institution,” not the “mental defective” definition.
This is another area where precision matters. The government should not use sloppy terminology or overbroad definitions to strip people of constitutional rights.
ATF also proposes to clarify when state-issued permits qualify as alternatives to a NICS check under the Brady Act, to require that the permit be valid and unexpired and that state law conform to congressional requirements.
Other clarification rules address biological sex on ATF forms, the definition of FFL “business premises,” straw-purchase guidance, and the definition of “willfully” for license suspension, revocation, and civil penalties. The “willfully” proposal would codify the Supreme Court’s Bryan v. United States standard, under which a person acts willfully when he knows his conduct is unlawful, even if he does not know the specific statutory provision being violated.
That last point deserves scrutiny. If ATF is serious about ending the old “gotcha” culture, the agency must apply willfulness in a way that separates true bad actors from paperwork mistakes and technical compliance errors.
ATF is issuing a final rule codifying its existing practice of conducting NICS checks during the NFA making-application process. The agency says this aligns regulatory text with current statutory requirements and operational practice.
ATF is also updating export-control references to reflect the division of authority between the Commerce and State Departments, updating proscribed-country import restrictions by replacing a static list with a dynamic reference to the State Department’s list, and removing the former Soviet-country import-denial list except for Russia.
The agency also proposes technical AECA component-definition updates, a final rule involving contraband cigarettes and smokeless tobacco, and a final rule changing NFA tax remittance regulations to reflect changes made by the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
Gun Owners Should Welcome This — And Stay Suspicious
This package is a welcome change in direction. It targets some of the worst Biden-era regulatory abuses, reduces needless NFA burdens, modernizes recordkeeping, and acknowledges that ATF cannot keep pretending its job is to invent new crimes out of old statutes.
But gun owners should not confuse reform with surrender.
The same agency that now says it wants partnership and clear statutory authority spent years trying to crush brace owners, pressure FFLs over paperwork, and stretch the NFA beyond what Congress wrote. The lesson is not that ATF has suddenly become harmless. The lesson is that elections, litigation, public pressure, and relentless scrutiny matter.
Gun owners, FFLs, manufacturers, and Second Amendment organizations should read the actual rule text, file comments where comments are open, support the genuine rollbacks, and demand stronger protections where ATF leaves itself too much discretion. This is progress. It is not the finish line.
The goal remains simple: violent criminals should be prosecuted, and peaceful gun owners should be left alone.
Duncan Johnson is a lifelong firearms enthusiast and unwavering defender of the Second Amendment—where “shall not be infringed” means exactly what it says. A graduate of George Mason University, he enjoys competing in local USPSA and multi-gun competitions whenever he’s not covering the latest in gun rights and firearm policy. Duncan is a regular contributor to AmmoLand News and serves as part of the editorial team responsible for AmmoLand’s daily gun-rights reporting and industry coverage.
Minnesota gun owners are warning that Senate Democrats are advancing a sweeping gun control package targeting AR-15s, magazines over 10 rounds, so-called ghost guns, binary triggers, and red-flag enforcement. iStock-2253799988
Gun rights organizations across Minnesotaissued urgent calls to actionas the state Senate prepared to advance sweeping firearms legislation through the Finance Committee on April 28, 2026.
The Minnesota Gun Owners Caucus sounded the alarm on social media on April 27. “ALERT: The Minnesota Senate is holding a hearing TOMORROW on an omnibus gun control bill that crams nearly every anti-gun wishlist item into one package,” the organization wrote. “What’s in it? Ban on future sales of semi-automatic rifles. ‘Ghost gun’ ban. Binary trigger ban. More funding for Red Flag (ERPO) enforcement. ‘School safety’ funding tied to gun control mandates. In other words: the usual ‘we swear this one will make you safer’ starter pack.”
The Caucus warned that opposition groups were already mobilizing. “Moms Demand Action is packing the room. Every Senator is being pressured to go on record. We need Minnesota gun owners to push back BEFORE the hearing starts at 8:30 AM tomorrow.”
The National Association for Gun Rightsechoedthe alarm. “ALL HANDS ON DECK FOR MINNESOTA!” the organization declared. “A massive gun control package is set to move through the Senate Finance Committee. The package includes a ban on most semi-automatic firearms, a magazine ban, red flag law expansion, ‘ghost gun’ laws, and more. It is the entire Virginia gun control playbook in one bill, and they are trying to pass it all at once.”
NAGR provided direct phone numbers for every Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, including Chair Senator John Marty, Vice Chair Senator Nick A. Frentz, and Senators Bobby Joe Champion, Zaynab Mohamed, Erin P. Murphy, Sandra L. Pappas, and Melissa H. Wiklund.
The alerts were responding toSenate File 3655, the central vehicle for Minnesota Democrats’ 2026 gun push. DFL Senator Zaynab Mohamed of Minneapolis authored the bill, which was introduced on February 19, 2026. SF 3655 prohibits the possession, sale, and transfer of firearms the bill designates “semiautomatic military-style assault weapons,” explicitly including the AR-15. It defines a “large-capacity magazine” as any capable of holding more than 10 rounds and bans their manufacture, sale, and possession.
Minnesotans who already own a banned firearm must apply to the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension for a “certification of ownership” by February 1, 2027, and renew it every three years. According to an analysis by theMinnesota Gun Owners Caucus, obtaining that certificate could require owners to consent to warrantless home inspections for “safe storage” compliance. Transfers are largely banned, inheritance is permitted only if the inheritor completes the certification process, and violations carry felony charges.
SF 3655 was the subject of amarathon hearing on March 13, 2026, in the Senate Judiciary and Public Safety Committee, which passed the bill6 to 3 on a party-line voteand re-referred it to the Senate Finance Committee. At the April 28 Finance Committee hearing,the bill was laid over on a voice voteand will be incorporated into SF 4067, a broader omnibus Gun Violence Prevention bill to be heard by the Finance Committee on April 29.
The Minnesota House remains the primary obstacle for gun control advocates. Because the chamber istied 67 to 67between Republicans and Democrats, no gun control bill has been able to advance there, and the companion House bill has stalled. Any movement would require bipartisan support that has not materialized.
NAGR haslikenedthe package to “the entire Virginia gun control playbook in one bill” — a reference to Virginia’s 2020 experience where Democrats swept both chambers and rapidly enacted sweeping gun restrictions. Minnesota Democrats appear to be betting that Senate passage will eventually create enough political pressure to break the House deadlock.
José Niño is a freelance writer based in Charlotte, North Carolina. You can contact him via Facebook and X/Twitter. Subscribe to his Substack newsletter by visiting “Jose Nino Unfiltered” on Substack.com.
