For the first couple of weeks of the second Trump administration, Second Amendment advocate groups felt left out of the conservative upheaval sweeping Washington.
Some even questioned the commitment President Donald Trump’s picks for top jobs had to gun rights, promising to hold their “feet to the fire and fight any attempts to further erode Americans’ right to keep and bear arms.”
But after signing a pro-gun executive order and making critical staff moves, the latest naming new FBI Director Kash Patel as the acting director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, the groups are expressing elation and hopes that they may get their Holy Grail — the elimination of the ATF.
Over the weekend, the nation’s top Second Amendment groups told Secrets that they are happy with Trump’s actions and added that gun owners and sellers will be the winners.
The “NRA welcomes President Trump’s continued efforts to protect America’s gun owners by reforming the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives. For too long, ATF has focused its efforts on restricting the rights of law-abiding citizens,” said NRA Executive Vice President and CEO Doug Hamlin.
He said that Patel is viewed as a pro-gun advocate ready, with Attorney General Pam Bondi, to implement Trump’s executive order to dismantle former President Joe Biden’s gun control actions.
Patel, Hamlin told Secrets, “will set the agency on the right track to implement President Trump’s executive order to protect Second Amendment rights and will ensure that the agency has strong leadership until a permanent director is confirmed by the Senate.”
When’s the DOGE field trip to ATF headquarters, @ElonMusk? Asking for America’s over 100 million gun owners. pic.twitter.com/4sn4kjZGZG
— NRA (@NRA) February 20, 2025
Under Biden, the agency put limits on what people could legally and easily buy and threatened gun dealers. On rules targeting gun accessories, such as so-called pistol braces attached to AR and AK-style pistols, the gun groups expect Patel and Bondi to erase the Biden-era changes, complying with federal court decisions.
While the ATF argued that it had the authority to put new rules on gun owners without congressional action, Trump’s team has arrived with a different view. In one of her first moves as attorney general, for example, Bondi fired the top lawyer at ATF.
“Kash Patel’s impact at ATF is going to be huge. Already, Pam Bondi has fired ATF’s chief counsel Pamela Hicks, who was a rabid anti-gunner and big Democrat donor. Bondi gave her the boot, correctly noting that ‘these people [at ATF] were targeting gun owners,’” said Erich Pratt, senior vice president of Gun Owners of America.
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— Gun Owners of America (@GunOwners) February 23, 2025
President Trump has asked Kash Patel to be acting director of the ATF. Kash is a true constitutionalist and is fiercely pro-gun. ???????? ???? pic.twitter.com/HzL828GZji
Alan Gottlieb, founder of the Second Amendment Foundation and chairman of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, said the days of over-bearing gun controls are over.
“Patel and Bondi will have a great impact at ATF and FBI when it comes to Second Amendment issues. Great for gun owners. Biden anti-gun rights policies will bite the dust. I expect that they will side with gun rights groups in current gun rights cases already in the courts. Reversing positions in both the courts and administration actions are going to have a major positive impact for gun ownership,” he told us.
Some are even hoping that Trump’s team will dismantle the ATF, folding key roles into other law enforcement agencies, and push to amend or change the prohibition-era National Firearms Act that regulates the use of items such as suppressors that are encouraged for use in other countries such as Britain and France.
“For too long, the ATF has veered off course, prioritizing law-abiding gun owners over the pursuit of actual criminals. As someone who has sponsored legislation to abolish the ATF and repeal the NFA, I believe this agency has outlived its purpose,” Rep. Eric Burlison (R-MO) said.
The lawmaker added, “I’m confident that Director Patel will work tirelessly to safeguard Americans’ Second Amendment rights. His leadership should focus on dismantling the unconstitutional policies pushed during the disastrous Biden administration and redirecting the agency’s efforts where they belong — away from law-abiding citizens. While I’d still prefer to see the ATF eliminated entirely, Director Patel’s appointment gives me hope that he’ll clean house and reform this bloated, redundant bureaucracy.”
And while Trump appears unlikely to immediately kill the agency as he has USAID, his moves have some hoping that he will in the future.
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“Kash Patel is a promising start, but we believe a complete and total elimination of the ATF is needed and is the only acceptable answer. With the stroke of a pen, President Trump can repeal every single Biden gun control order, rule, regulation, edict that’s ever come out of the ATF,” said Patrick Parsons, executive vice president American Firearms Association.
“We have an historic opportunity to abolish a sacred cow of the left and bury it forever. Empty it out. Sell the headquarters. Whatever it takes to get that done, do it now and do it quickly,” he added.