Trust But Verify: ATF Director Says He Wants to Rebuild Trust After Biden Era Abuses

America’s Second Amendment community had some insights into the outlook of the newly confirmed ATF Director Robert Cekada, when he recently testified before the House Oversight Committee’s Subcommittee on Federal Law Enforcement. The May 14 hearing, Privacy Protections & the Second Amendment: Examining ATF’s Relationship to the Tiahrt Amendment, concerned the need for “critical oversight” of ATF, the Tiahrt Amendment, and ATF’s track record on protecting Second Amendment rights.

The Tiahrt Amendment generally prohibits ATF from disseminating firearms trace data other than to law enforcement agencies or prosecutors investigating crimes, with the object of protecting law enforcement, confidential informants and other witnesses.

Clay Higgins (R-LA), the Subcommittee Chair, set the stage by referring to recent history showing that ATF “has sometimes disregarded the law.” Some violations “clearly stem from the political and ideological opposition that some ATF bureaucrats have for the Tiahrt law,” with several “glaring examples.”

The Biden-era ATF “assisted gun control groups in creating a map of gun shops” by providing Tiahrt-protected information in a freedom of information response, which “seemed intended to help anti-Second Amendment groups.” Another disclosure of trace data was made to the Gun Owners of America in response to a FOIA request, resulting in an ATF “gag order” to prevent the GOA from sharing the information and, ultimately, in litigation.

Chairman Higgins continued, explaining the Biden administration’s ATF took a variety of other “troubling actions” that “used bureaucratic complexities to prey upon legally operating firearms dealers and license-holders,” notably through a zero-tolerance approach to compliance and an expanded definition of “engaged in the business” of dealing firearms, “potentially implicating unsuspecting, everyday Americans as federally regulated gun dealers, and subjecting them to severe penalties for noncompliance.”

ATF, he said, had “defied both the letter and spirit of the law,” and its improper treatment of protected data not only served “as a window into the agency’s successes and failures” in upholding the Second Amendment, but demonstrated that rigorous, ongoing oversight of the agency was necessary regardless of which party controlled the White House.

Director Cekada began by affirming ATF’s commitment “to protecting and preserving” the right to keep and bear arms. The agency, he said, has “entered a new era of reform to rebuild trust with the industry, federal firearms licensees, lawful gun owners, and the public while still prioritizing our efforts on public safety.” Actions taken towards this goal include revoking the zero-tolerance compliance policy and replacing it with “a new policy that emphasizes fairness and transparency while recognizing that FFLs are often the first line of defense against gun crime.” ATF had also issued 34 notices of final and proposed rulemakings in compliance with President Trump’s executive order on Second Amendment rights, and Cekada encouraged committee members and their constituents to submit comments on these proposed rules because “we want to make sure that we get these right.”

In other notable testimony, Cekada explicitly stated that his agency does not have an illegal firearms registry and that it complies with all federal laws. “We are committed to upholding the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens and to protect their privacy, including and especially as it relates to the Tiahrt Amendment.” Any decision to share trace data “requires explicit legal justification.” The prior trace data disclosures had been investigated and determined to be inadvertent, according to Cekada, and he was unaware of any intentional violations of that law. Going forward, the director assured the committee, ATF’s new software would minimize the possibility of future unauthorized disclosures.

Challenged on the revocation of the Biden-era “engaged in the business” amendment and the impact on public safety, Cekada responded that “the ‘engaged in the business’ rule did not help public safety at all, to be very frank,” simply because the uptick in people who became FFLs in compliance with the rule was miniscule. “It showed us zero impact.”

The director emphasized that “we don’t prevent violent crime by threatening gun owners and law abiding citizens, we prevent violent crime by holding criminals accountable in serving, through the courts, a significant sentence that serves as a deterrent.” He added that he was “sick and tired of seeing people who did not commit the crimes being held accountable for violent crime they did not commit.”

One example Cekada pointed to was that the Biden administration opted not to enforce the new trafficking provisions of the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act signed into law in 2022. ATF agents in Arizona “tried to present over 250 cases” of suspected cartel-related gun trafficking for prosecution but “[s]adly, the U.S. Attorney at the time refused to take those charges forward.” It was a repeat, Cekada opined, of Operation Fast and Furious, “where ATF was tracking firearms that were already sold and no one was doing anything about it and we were going to be held accountable.” He subsequently approached Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche and the first trafficking conspiracy charges from those investigations are now underway.

Another instance Cekada brought up was that one of the “first steps” coming out of the last administration’s Department of Justice “was a letter that went out to all law enforcement personnel telling us to not charge anyone with any statute that carries a minimum mandatory sentence because they didn’t want to see anyone put in prison for a long time. That’s not the way to solve violent crime.”

Asked by Rep. Eli Crane (R-AZ) how he interpreted the Second Amendment, Cekada referred to his confirmation hearing where he expressed how much he and his agency respect the Second Amendment and the Constitution. The founders intended the Second Amendment to give citizens the ability to defend themselves because at the time, “the citizenry did not have a guarantee that the government would protect them, and they wanted the opportunity to protect themselves against a tyrannical government.” Crane replied, “I just want to make sure we’re on the same page on that.”

Rebuilding trust takes time and more than just encouraging rhetoric, particularly given the dismal record and overreach of the Biden era ATF. Yet Cekada’s testimony and actions to date provide reasons to be optimistic that ATF is being steered toward a culture and mission more respectful of the Second Amendment, with enforcement focused on actual violent offenders and the traffickers that supply them with guns, rather than on law-abiding licensees and gun owners.