The four federal gun violence prevention efforts Trump could dismantle

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The four federal gun violence prevention efforts Trump could dismantle

Trump during the NRA ILA Leadership Forum at the National Rifle Association (NRA) Annual Meeting & Exhibits at the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center in Dallas, TX.

The 2024 presidential candidates couldn’t have been further apart on gun policy. Vice President Kamala Harris called for universal background checks and an assault weapons ban, while former President Donald Trump favors loosening concealed carry laws nationwide.

Though neither platform is likely to clear Congress, Trump’s victory could give him the power to dismantle three years of gun violence prevention measures enacted under President Joe Biden, who has arguably done more to try to stem gun violence than any president in decades.

“In my second term, we will roll back every Biden attack on the Second Amendment—the attacks are fast and furious—starting the minute that Crooked Joe shuffles his way out of the White House,” Trump told National Rifle Association members gathered for a convention in Dallas in May. 

The Trace shares a look at the Biden-era policies most likely to be on the chopping block. Trump’s campaign did not respond to requests for comment.

Sacking ATF Director Steve Dettelbach

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, or ATF—the lead law enforcement agency charged with regulating the gun industry—never had a permanent director under Trump when he was president. In July 2022, former federal prosecutor Steven Dettelbach became the first Senate-confirmed director of the agency in more than seven years. Trump has vowed to remove him.

“At noon on Inauguration Day, we will sack the anti-gun fanatic Steve Dettelbach,” Trump told the NRA in May. “Have you ever heard of him? He’s a disaster.”

Since taking office, Dettelbach has increased oversight of the firearms industry, much of it at Biden’s direction. In 2021, Biden ordered the agency to implement a zero tolerance policy toward gun dealers who willfully sell to prohibited purchasers or fail to conduct background checks. The policy resulted in the ATF revoking more gun store licenses in 2024 than in any year over at least the past two decades.

Biden also ordered the ATF to issue annual reports on gun trafficking, something it hadn’t done in two decades. The agency has since released three, with a fourth volume expected by the end of Biden’s term.

“I don’t think we will see that under a Trump administration, and that will make it really hard for researchers and law enforcement to understand how guns are moving and trafficking and which policies are best,” said Nick Wilson, the senior director of gun violence prevention at the Center for American Progress Action Fund, a progressive think tank.

The White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention

Biden launched the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention last year to coordinate federal efforts for a more holistic approach to the issue. While the office doesn’t make gun laws, or even enforce them, it serves as a clearinghouse for the administration’s messaging and policymaking on gun violence. 

The office launched a resource center to help states implement red flag laws, which temporarily disarm people deemed to be a danger to themselves or others. It has also regularly met with survivors, supported communities affected by mass shootings, and helped carry out Biden’s executive orders (more on those below).

Before Biden even took office, gun reform advocates urged the office’s creation as a visible symbol of the federal government’s commitment to addressing the crisis. Now, they fully expect the office—currently overseen by Harris—to be shuttered as soon as Trump takes office. 

With Trump reelected, “There’s no more White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention,” said Adzi Vokhiwa, vice president of policy at the Community Justice Action Fund, a gun violence prevention group. “I think all of that goes away.”

Democrats on Capitol Hill, including Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut and Rep. Maxwell Frost of Florida, introduced bills to make the office permanent, but the legislation stalled in a narrowly divided Senate and Republican-controlled House. 

That likely means the office will be gone “on Day One” of the second Trump presidency, Murphy told The Trace. “The progress we’ve made has saved lives, but it has also given a lot of victims’ families the sense that their advocacy means something,” he said. “They’re going to be talking to a brick wall if Trump is in the White House, and to the extent anybody in the White House talks to them, it’ll just be for show.”

Should Trump decide to keep the office, it would be at his whim—possibly refashioned as a repository for pro-gun policies or, as some gun rights advocates have suggested, an outfit to push Second Amendment expansion.

“The obvious choice is for the Trump administration to completely dismantle it,” said Devin Hughes, founder of the gun violence research outfit GVPedia.

“More likely, however, they will use the office as a platform to spread disinformation on gun violence that is favorable to the gun lobby, with someone like John Lott at its head,” Hughes said, referencing the debunked economist and Trump administration alum whose skewed crime statistics are touted by Republican lawmakers and the gun lobby.

The Bipartisan Safer Communities Act

Passed in 2022 in the wake of mass shootings in Uvalde, Texas, and Buffalo, New York, the BSCA was the first significant gun reform law in nearly three decades, receiving bipartisan support in the Senate. It has since become a target.

Fully repealing the law would require an unlikely 60 votes in the Senate and a Republican majority in the House, but Trump plans to unwind as much of it as he can via executive action, a gun-friendly attorney general, and a revamped ATF that favors gun rights over gun regulation.

“President Trump will appoint an ATF director who will review these extremely burdensome regulations that make Americans less safe,” an unnamed representative of the Trump campaign told the NRA’s America’s First Freedom magazine in October, calling it “unfortunate” that Biden signed the law.

Gun Dealers and Background Checks

A prime target appears to be a provision of the law that clarifies when a gun seller must obtain a federal license. The change aimed to reduce the number of gun dealers avoiding licensure so they would not have to keep records or conduct background checks on their customers. The seemingly small shift had a notable effect: Within a year, prosecutions for unlicensed dealing rose by 52%. 

“The reason that the Biden administration is pushing these rules is to make sure that their national gun registry, which President Trump will also undo, will be able to track more people who own guns,” the Trump campaign told the NRA’s magazine. (Neither the BSCA nor any of Biden’s executive actions create a national gun registry, which is prohibited by a 1986 federal law, but the NRA and gun rights advocates liken expanded background checks to a backdoor gun registry.)

Some Republicans may support such a move by Trump. That includes Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, who was the lead GOP negotiator on the BSCA. Cornyn has faced criticism from gun rights proponents for supporting the bill and was booed at the 2022 Texas Republican Party’s state convention after Biden signed it.

A spokesperson for Cornyn pointed to a letter to the editor the senator wrote in May criticizing the ATF’s interpretation of the law: “I stand by the reforms in the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, but I reject the Biden administration’s unconstitutional attempt to exploit this law in order to implement its radical gun control agenda counter to the will of Congress and the people who elected us.”

Vokhiwa, who oversees federal and state policy efforts at Community Justice, said the ATF’s regulatory change was legally justifiable. Still, at least three lawsuits are challenging it.

“They’re defensible,” she said. “But I think that a Trump administration would just choose to not defend them, and not defend the actions of anything that was done under the Biden-Harris administration. That would really be dangerous for public safety. It would undermine ATF efforts to slow down trafficking of firearms.”

Trump or a Republican-controlled House could also hamper enforcement by cutting ATF staffing or reducing funding, which has long been sought by Republicans in Congress. “If they fire all the licensing inspectors, then it’s going to be very hard to enforce the rule,” Wilson said.

Funding for Gun Violence Prevention

The BSCA also set aside more than $13 billion in funding to support state crisis interventions like red flag laws, community-based violence intervention programs, school safety, and mental health services.

Congress funded the BSCA through 2026, but a Trump administration could alter grant programs to favor other crisis interventions over red flag laws or try to shift money from community-based programs to law enforcement initiatives.

“It matters who is in these positions within the different parts of the executive branch who’re actually responsible for reviewing applications and directing funding,” Vokhiwa said.

Trump’s campaign told the NRA’s magazine that he plans to appoint a pro-gun attorney general—responsible for overseeing much of the funding—”who will stop the weaponization of government against lawful gun ownership and who will prioritize traditional law enforcement by catching and punishing criminals.”

Murphy, who was the lead Democratic negotiator of the BSCA and helped shepherd it through the Senate, said he believes Trump would try to roll back as much of the law as he can.

“You have to open up your imagination about what a second Trump presidency is going to look like,” Murphy said. “This isn’t going to be normal. You may see him outright refuse to implement laws he doesn’t like, like the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, and potentially short-circuit Congress and try to impose certain gun industry priorities on the country without going through the legislative process.”

Federal law prevents funding from being shifted to other purposes, but Trump could simply refuse to distribute the funds. Trump has repeatedly said he would violate the federal Impoundment Control Act, which limits the president’s ability to unilaterally refuse or redirect congressional spending. 

There is also a mechanism for Congress to cancel spending at the president’s request, said Wilson, of the Center for American Progress Action Fund. “Trump could send a message to Congress saying, ‘The NRA told me that they don’t want this money going to the community.’ That triggers a bill that could be voted on. And it’s filibuster-proof, so Congress would only need a simple majority to rescind the money.”

Biden’s Executive Orders

Biden has announced more than 50 executive actions on gun violence since he took office in January 2021, most of which could be easily rescinded or ignored under a Trump administration.

“I take Trump at his word: He said he’s going to roll back all the progress we made on guns under President Biden,” Murphy said. “And I believe him. I think he’ll do whatever the gun lobby tells him to do.”

In one of his first executive orders, Biden directed the ATF to issue regulations on ghost guns and other unserialized firearms, requiring buyers to undergo background checks. The new rules are currently before the Supreme Court, which appears likely to uphold them. 

Biden also directed the agency to propose a rule for regulating so-called stabilizing braces, which effectively convert AR-15-style pistols into more accurate short-barreled rifles while being more concealable and maneuverable than their full-length counterparts. The devices were used in mass shootings at a supermarket in Boulder, Colorado; outside a bar in Dayton, Ohio; and at a private school in Nashville, Tennessee. The regulation—which requires owners to register brace-equipped guns as short-barrelled rifles under the National Firearms Act—took effect in 2023, but has faced court challenges.

The Biden administration’s other actions have included encouraging safer gun storage, declaring gun violence a public health crisis, restricting exports of firearms abroad, and establishing a task force to target machine gun conversion devices and 3D-printed firearms. 

Gun violence prevention advocates believe most of that work will be rescinded or halted.

“The bottom line is a Trump administration would be devastating for public safety,” Vokhiwa said. “It would walk back the progress that we’ve seen over the last several years, and frankly, it will cost us lives. It would be really devastating, particularly for Black and brown communities that are most impacted by this issue.”

This story was produced by The Trace and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.

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