Trump admin rolls back 3 dozen gun regulations, defends Second Amendment

The Trump administration is reportedly scrapping more than three dozen firearms regulations, abandoning a crackdown on illegal sales, restoring gun rights to some people with mental illness and loosening oversight of private weapons transactions. The changes are being made by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the federal agency responsible for enforcing gun laws in the United States.

According to a New York Times report, the agency made the changes in view of critics and even some A.T.F. veterans, the agency, in closely mirroring the demands made by gun owners and manufacturers to lighten their regulatory burden. However, enacting these changes would come at the expense of public safety.

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Not only this, the bureau itself has already been weakened with hundreds of its officials diverted to the immigration enforcement agency. Supporters of the relaxations argued that some of the reversals would return regulations to what they were only a few years ago, before former US President Joe Biden took office.

It is pertinent to note that following a series of mass shootings, Biden signed gun control measures, ending nearly three decades of gridlock over whether and how to regulate firearms. “With the Biden regulations that we got and put in place, we advanced the ball,” Kris Brown, the president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, told the New York Times, one of the country’s biggest gun control organisations.

But the Trump administration’s approach “takes us back 100 years,” she added. “It’s really decimating A.T.F.’s ability to regulate this industry.”

Administration's commitment to Second Amendment

According to the New York Times, a White House official said that the administration's latest policy reflects its commitment to ensuring that Americans could exercise their Second Amendment rights, accusing the Biden administration of bypassing Congress and using the regulatory process to restrict gun rights.

Mark Oliva, a spokesman for the National Shooting Sports Foundation, the firearms industry’s trade association, noted that the changes were made to clarify the gun regulations that are in place. “We want clarity to know how we’re going to be able to conduct business,” he said, “to be able to produce and to be able to sell firearms in accordance with the laws and regulations that govern our industry.”

It is pertinent to note that the new Trump administration has removed major policies, including a zero-tolerance approach toward gun dealers who repeatedly broke the law. They have moved to eliminate more than three dozen rules and raised the legal threshold for revoking a dealer’s license; extended gun rights to buyers who had faced restrictions because of mental illness or inability to manage their own finances, etc.

The administration is also targeting gun regulations passed by the Democrats at the state and local levels. It has challenged bans on semiautomatic rifles in Colorado, the District of Columbia and Virginia. On Wednesday, it sued the state of California for its restrictions on the sale of Glock and Glock-style handguns, and Virginia for limits on the sale of semiautomatic rifles, hours after both laws went into effect, the NYT reported.

Critics have raised concerns that the removal of regulations could increase cases related to gun violence.