ATF Reinterprets Rules to Allow Import of UTM, Simunition Training Rounds, Dual-Use Barrels

It may not be happening as fast as some of us in the gun rights community would like — spoiler alert: it never does — but the Trump ATF is working to undo much of the damage that’s been done to gun rights via regulatory fiat over the last couple of decades.

Today, ATF Deputy Director Robert Cekada issued two new rulings announcing that the firearms regulator has reinterpreted the agency’s view of a couple of items that you wouldn’t think would be controversial: non-lethal training rounds and “dual-use” barrels.

The training rounds, which are produced by two companies, Simunition and UTM, are just that…”marking” rounds used for realistic force-on-force training scenarios, mostly — but not exclusively — for law enforcement and the military. They’re fired from specific-use guns that can’t fire standard ammunition.

Again, you wouldn’t think they’d be controversial in any way, but you’d be wrong. If it has to do with firearms in at all, the Biden administration bent over backwards to gratify its valued constituents in the gun control industry. Along those lines, ATF announced in 2023 that it was banning the import of Simuntion and UTM rounds for civilian use (UTM is made in the UK, Simunition in Canada). They claimed that the rounds have no “sporting purpose” and therefore can’t be imported under the Gun Control Act of 1968.

In today’s letter, Deputy Director Cekada announced that, upon further review, ATF no longer considers the rounds to be ammunition at all. Because they are “not designed for offensive and defensive combat and are not designed for use in any firearm,” The GCA doesn’t apply and importers and bring them in for whatever use they choose. 

The “dual-use” barrel import ban is even more ludicrous, but also has has roots in the 925(d)(3) sporting purpose language of the GCA. Back in 2005, under the George W. Bush administration, ATF clamped down on so-called dual-use barrels. In short, ATF decided that if a barrel had been or could be used in either a firearm judged as non-sporting, it was banned from import. It didn’t matter if the barrel — a simple metal tube, after all — could also be used in a sporting use firearm once it got here. If it had any use in a non-sporting gun, it was deemed verboten for import.

With today’s announcement, ATF is now taking a much more reasonable stance. As long as the barrel can be used in sporting purpose guns, they can now be imported.

Both the training round and dual-use barrel import rule changes take effect immediately. Because these are new interpretations of existing ATF rules (rather than entirely new rules) they don’t have to go through the usual 90-day public comment period.

We talked to NSSF’s General Counsel and SVP for Government and Public Affairs, Larry Keane about the abrupt changes. He described this as the result of “ATF’s new leadership correctly and accurately applying the law as written by Congress.”

We’d call that progress. Here are the two letters ATF issued today . . .

 

 

And here’s the letter addressing the barrels . . .