By Dave Workman
Editor-in-Chief
Another tenet of former President Joe Biden’s outright war on guns and the Second Amendment has been trashed by the Department of Justice with the announcement that DOJ and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives has repealed the “Enhanced Regulatory Enforcement Policy and the review of Final Rule 2021R-08F, related to stabilizing braces, and Final Rule 2022R-17F, related to the definition of ‘engaging in the business’ of firearms dealing.”
In a DOJ news release, Attorney General Pam Bondi stated, “This Department of Justice believes that the 2nd Amendment is not a second-class right. The prior administration’s ‘Zero Tolerance’ policy unfairly targeted law-abiding gun owners and created an undue burden on Americans seeking to exercise their constitutional right to bear arms – it ends today.”
Almost immediately after taking office, President Donald Trump eliminated the Biden-Harris “White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention,” a thinly-disguised effort by the former administration to push gun control policies on Capitol Hill and in various state legislatures. This new move is one more major step to dismantling the entire Biden-era crusade against law-abiding gun owners and small retailers. Many gun rights activists saw the Biden administration’s efforts as an all-out attack on the Second
In the DOJ news release, Acting ATF Director Kash Patel explains, “Today’s repeal of the Zero Tolerance Policy and the comprehensive review of stabilizing brace regulations and the definition of ‘engaged in the business’ marks a pivotal step toward restoring fairness and clarity in firearms regulation. We are committed to working with all stakeholders to ensure our policies are balanced, constitutional and protective of Americans’ Second Amendment rights.”
Patel was appointed acting ATF director while he also heads the FBI. Since taking over, he has initiated a welcome change in priorities at the agency which many in the firearms community believe should be abolished. For years, the ATF has developed a reputation for being at odds with gun owners, and for scandalous operations such as ‘Fast and Furious” during the Obama administration, which allowed thousands of guns to be “walked” across the border into Mexico, where they have ended up in the hands of drug cartel killers.
Predictably, the gun prohibition lobby is having fits and trying to portray this development as a return to lawlessness. Emma Brown, executive director at the Giffords gun control group, posted on “X” that the DOJ announcement “puts gun dealers breaking the law back in business. About as soft on crime as you can get!”
As noted by BearingArms.com, “What is happening now is that dealers who make paperwork errors aren’t facing the loss of their business, to say nothing of possible prison time, simply because of a good-faith mistake. This isn’t about dealers who are throwing guns sold to criminals on the 4473s of lawful purchasers to cover the paperwork. It’s not about the guys selling guns out of the back of the store and then pretending the guns were stolen.”
Throughout his four-year tenure, Biden made no secret of his disdain for U.S. gun owners. The return of Trump to the Oval Office, and his appointments of Bondi and Patel to lead the agencies which the Biden administration weaponized against their opponents and critics—including gun owners and firearms dealers and manufacturers—is increasingly being greeted as a welcome change.
