GOA’s Erich Pratt on the Big Beautiful Bill and the Road Ahead

In June 2025 during the Big Beautiful Bill Act talks, I had a chat with Erich Pratt from Gun Owners of America. I was covering the top five national Second Amendment groups in the U.S. and what their plans are for 2026. This interview was part of coverage I did for Concealed Carry Magazine.

Gun Owners of America is a 501(c)(4) lobby organization. Their sister organization, the Gun Owners Foundation, is a 501(c)(3). Pratt and I talk a little about the two groups, grassroots activism, as well as charting a path forward into 2026.

Since that conversation occurred prior to the signing of the Big Beautiful Bill Act by President Donald Trump, the final status of the bill was not yet known — the registration requirements for select National Firearms Act taxed items were not lifted.

Petrolino: Today I’m talking with Erich Pratt. Erich is the Senior Vice President of Gun Owners of America. Erich, how you doing today?

Pratt: Doing great. So good to be with you, John. Thank you so much for having me on and I really appreciate what you do — educating the 2A community.

Petrolino: Erich, I definitely appreciate you and your time today as well. And you know, we discussed this earlier. We’re going to just do a rundown about some of the highlights of 2025 — granted, 2025 isn’t over yet — and then also, more importantly, the strategy also going into 2026.

So, I just gave a brief introduction, your position at Gun Owners of America. I left out you’re also a heck of a nice guy that I’m happy to know and have in my life. You’re a stalwart defender of the Second Amendment. What else can you tell me about your role at Gun Owners of America? And then also, I want to talk a little bit about Gun Owners Foundation as well, and maybe we could suss some of that out.

Pratt: At Gun Owners of America, the way we’re set up under IRS rules, we are a lobby organization, and that’s different than the Foundation, which, by law, can only spend up to 20% of our funds lobbying. 

Typically, GOF, Gun Owners Foundation doesn’t do lobbying. That’s our arm that is involved in the courts and funds legal cases. But at GOA, we are fighting to repeal gun control, to win back freedoms that have been taken from us. We are a no compromise organization, and you know, we were founded in 1976 by then state legislator, Senator H.L. Bill Richardson, back when California was a red state, it’s obviously changed quite a bit since then. He was a stalwart, no compromise defender of the Second Amendment. In that vein, we’ve always been no compromise and are trying to repeal every anti gun law on the books. 

We’re working in the Congress, in the states, in fact, I would say GOA was the originator of the push for constitutional carry. We started back when it was called Vermont carry, but constitutional carry, we were the first national organization pushing for that; it’s just so exciting to see we’re up to 29 states. That’s just an example of the type of work that we’ve done and initiated.

Petrolino: That’s awesome. When we’re seeing some of these cases, we say lots of litigation going on, there’s stuff that’s dropping this week —- we’re talking at the beginning of June 2025 right now — so it’s kind of unfair to plot out our entire year and what we’re going to do beyond, but we’ve even seen a bunch of filings just two days ago. When we see these GOA and Gun Owners Foundation cases, it’s basically like you said, it’s the Foundation that’s following through with the litigation. While Gun Owners of America are running interference and as a party, right?

Pratt: Right. So, yeah, we’ve been involved in a lot of litigation, and really both organizations are involved, GOA and GOF. Obviously the advantage of having GOF, the Foundation is that people can contribute to that and it’s tax deductible for them. That is an advantage.

We’ve been involved in some key cases. We joined with Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, for example, to challenge Biden’s pistol brace ban a couple of years ago, and it was exciting. We got a preliminary injunction against that rule so that Biden could not enforce that against the members of several states and all but also including our members nationwide.

We also teamed up with Ken Paxton again to challenge the “engaged in the business rule.” And you know the shorthand for that Biden rule was all about implementing universal background checks, and once again, we were able to get an injunction against that so that it couldn’t be enforced against our members.

We’ve also were taking on the Biden zero tolerance against gun dealers, and I tell you — they had put hundreds of dealers out of business just for simple clerical mistakes. It was awful what they were doing. There was no way we could defend them all. But we went into a couple different states, filed suit against the ATF and had 100% batting average, so to speak. Every case that we took, we ended up winning and forced the ATF to backtrack and stop pursuing revocation against those particular dealers. 

What they were trying to do was prevent us from challenging the overall policy of zero tolerance. They would moot the case by saying, “Okay, okay, we won’t revoke this particular dealer.”

But how exciting, that once the new changeover came to the Trump Administration, we started working with them — with the ATF there and saying, “Hey, this policy needs to be reversed.” We were working with them on the ground floor with that and and actually, when the decision came down to revoke the zero tolerance policy, they actually allowed us to break the news on that. GOA broke the news. It’s kind of funny, because people were saying, “Well, what’s your authority on that?” And it’s like, “We are the authority on this in this case, because they told us.” That was just, that was really exciting.

Now the fact that the administration is going the next step, where they’re saying to dealers, “Hey, if you were unfairly forced out of business, reapply. We’re going to get you back to your former status.”

A lot of good things are happening, but that’s just a small example of some of the things that we’ve been doing legally. And again, it’s the Foundation and GOA both that have been heavily involved in that.

Petrolino: It is incredibly exciting times that we’re living in right now. And of course, naturally, last year, the 2024 election was a big boost for us. The message that we got to get out there is to keep our feet on the gas pedal. We need to keep, keep going forward. We don’t want to pull back. Now’s not a time for that.

We’re just over 100 days into this administration, a little over — about half the year and there’s a lot of scrutiny and a lot of conversations and talk about the Trump Administration and his level of support for the Second Amendment. I know that other organizations have been in communications with the White House. I know that you know our friend and my chairman, Mr. Alan Gottlieb, he went out to Mar-a-Lago the week after the election, and there are people and the organizations are talking to the Trump Administration.

Can you speak to that a little bit more specifically? Besides you’ve been working with the ATF, but there’s communication lines that are wide open. Is that safe to say?

Pratt: Yeah, absolutely. And it’s been an exciting huge improvement from Trump 1.0 during the first administration. We’ve had conversations with the administration at all levels, from our own trips down to Mar-a-Lago to working with people at DOJ and the ATF. I mentioned the zero tolerance policy, that was one of the things that we’d been talking to them about. That was exciting to see that reverse. 

A lot of good things have been happening. For example, the DOJ saying that they’re going to be investigating states or localities for denying Second Amendment rights. That’s probably, perhaps the first time in history, we’re seeing something like that where a presidential administration is really holding states accountable for denying people their Second Amendment rights. The first case that they announced that they’re examining is a case that GOA is involved in, the one dealing with the LA Sheriffs holding up issuing permits. They were taking up to two years and it was costing people 1000s of dollars. 

The whole idea is that there’s a pattern and practice here of denying people their civil rights, their Second Amendment rights. It was exciting to see the administration come out and say that they’ve also withdrawn their support from anti gun cases. 

One of the things we had talked to the administration about is, “Hey, you — you’re taking the right position on Biden’s pistol brace ban.” In other words, we knew that they were opposed to it. We said, “There’s this case that’s in D.C. where one of the things that you’re charging a guy with is that he supposedly was in possession of an illegal pistol brace firearm.” And they looked at that and they said, “You know, you’re right.” Obviously it started under the Biden Administration, but they dropped that charge.

The administration has also reversed itself on suppressors and FRTs and things like that. That’s been an exciting change as well.

One of the concerns that we brought up with the administration was all the anti gun grants that were going for studies at the CDC and the NIH. The administration announced they’re cutting that. That was a welcome change. The Biden Administration that couldn’t throw enough money at figuring out more studies, more ways to take our rights. 

I’m sure people have seen that the administration is working towards restoring Second Amendment rights to nonviolent offenders. And there again, GOA has been on the ground floor working with the administration on not only specific cases, but just generally — ways to attack that problem. 

Another thing that I know that’s been real important to you, John, is the whole Brady permits issue. Under the Brady law, people can use their concealed carry permit to bypass the NICS check when purchasing a firearm. Now that’s under federal law. However, the ATF has only authenticated about 30 states saying that in those 30 states you can [do that], and for various reasons, in the other 20 states you can’t. We went into two states, Michigan and Alabama, and sued the ATF, arguing that you’ve revoked the ability for people to use their carry permits to do that and that was inappropriate. Once again, in conversations with folks in the administration, they’ve revised and updated their stance on this. With Michigan and Alabama, they’ve relented, and now people in those two states can, once again, bypass the NICS check if they have their carry permit. That’s another thing that we want to keep pushing. 

It’s a catch-22 I will give you. I mean, we, you know, I earlier, I was telling you, we support constitutional carry, so we don’t think people should need a permit to carry concealed. However, there are advantages, you know, for reciprocity and things like that. So people choose to get carry permits. Well, if you have a carry permit, you know the law right now says that exempts you from a NICS check, and so we’re going to try to pursue that in as many states as we can. You know, where resources will allow to make that happen.

That’s probably just the tip of the iceberg. There are so many things going on, John, that have been really exciting, but a lot of good things have been happening. And again, it’s just a welcome change. It’s really a much different Trump 2.0 version over what we saw the first time.

Petrolino: Let’s not neglect the high level of grassroots activism. And that’s something that you guys pride yourselves by, too. What has that been like now in 2025 and then how do we see this morphing into 2026. From an activism standpoint.

Pratt: Let me go back even a previous year, because just to show how important grassroots activism is, in 2024 even with Biden as president, we were still able to get pro gun legislation across the finish line and signed by Biden. Now he wouldn’t have signed these things if it was a stand alone provision, but we were able to work with House leadership to get two key things in a bigger budget bill that Biden just wasn’t going to veto or shut down the entire government for these two provisions.

For example, with veterans, we work to stop the funding for sending names — veterans’ names to the NICS system. 99% of mental defectives in NICS are military veterans. They go for counseling, they get fiduciary to handle their finances, and bam, their names were being sent to the FBI NICS system and then they became prohibited purchasers. Well, that’s no longer happening. It started under Bill Clinton. It’s no longer happening. That was as a result of just grassroots activism. GOA working on the inside, but then grassroots activists demanding that this happen.

The other key thing was ATF being cut by over $120 million, both of those things happened during the Biden Administration. By the way, we want to get rid of the ATF, but short of that, we want to cut as much as we can and keep cutting. It was delightful to see people like Senator Durbin, an extreme anti gunner from Illinois lamenting that $120 million cut, saying it was going to hurt the ATF’s ability to enforce gun control. That was under an anti gun administration. You can imagine now how exciting things are.

We are pushing — currently, as we’re speaking — to amend Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill, which, by the way, being a reconciliation bill, it’s strictly a budget bill, and that means there is no Senate filibuster. Our strategy that we hatched about half a year ago and we started working with congressional offices was, we want to get some key pro gun reforms stuck into the reconciliation bill so that it can’t be filibustered. Things like, for example, concealed carry reciprocity, or repealing gun free zones — both of those things don’t involve the budget. And to push those things we know that Chuck Schumer in the Senate would kill it with a filibuster.

But there are some budgetary issues like pulling things out of the NFA. And what is the NFA? The NFA is a tax, right? The National Firearms Act is a tax. You go to get suppressors, you pay a $200 tax, or you get an SBR — short-barreled rifle, you pay a $200 tax. By repealing these parts of the NFA it doesn’t matter with a reconciliation bill, it can increase the budget or decrease the budget either way, as it just has to be financial related. 

We started working with these congressional offices specifically for those two things. We’re happy to say grassroots activism pushed the suppressor repeal across the finish line. One of the frustrating things about legislators is they just give you little bits, but not everything you’re asking for. And that’s why the grassroots is so important. Because at first, all they wanted to do was repeal the $200 tax on the suppressors, but they still wanted to leave it in the NFA, which means the registration and all that goes along with that; the waiting periods, etc. We said, “No, no, no.” We just melted their phone lines. I mean, so much so we had reports they were turning off the phones in the House of Representatives. Finally they relented and — also got to give a shout out to Representative Andrew Clyde of Georgia. What a hero he is. This man fought and fought and fought on the inside, because you need a champion on the inside. And he was that guy fighting to say, “No, I want suppressors taken out, completely out of the NFA.” So anyway, we got that in the House bill as we’re talking right now… 

Petrolino: I know.

Pratt: John, that’s where we’re at. Now the bill is in the Senate, and now we’re doing the same thing, where we are ramping up the phone calls to say, “Hey, taking out suppressors was good, but now let’s get the short-barreled firearms out.”

The reason why that’s so important is so that never again will a future anti gun administration — like what Biden did — be able to weaponize that part of the NFA to issue another pistol brace ban. That outlawed up to 40 million firearms.

When you ask about the grassroots, we’re working on the inside. I will tell you quite honestly, working on the inside, while that’s important and it’s helpful, it’s not enough. You need the grassroots melting the phone lines, letting legislators know they’re being watched, and that is such a huge part of what we get done. The reason why we’re able to be effective in getting these things done is because we greatly utilize our grassroots and we consider them our partners in demanding that things get done. The fact that legislators have to return every two years in the House to get reelected, I mean, that has a huge impact when they’re getting a lot of people who are calling them. Those are just, kind of just some of the high level battles that we’ve been fighting lately and some of them very effectively. It’s kudos! to the grassroots that are making this happen.

Petrolino: I think they really did move the ball a lot on this. I’ve been following it. I haven’t been covering it. I’ve been following it closely because it’s a hot topic. By the time you get to it, somebody else is covering it.

But this was a huge concerted effort, and you want to talk a little bit too about how that all came into play, because there’s a lot of pieces to this, right? You know, the American Suppressor Association is involved. There’s a lot of workings here. Do you care to talk a little bit about that?

Pratt: The initial kind of concession from the House, what they had in Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill, was that they were only going to remove the tax and that was a step in the right direction. But we had been demanding all along we want suppressors out of the NFA. Quite frankly, I think you should be able to buy a suppressor the way you buy a magazine, no background check at all, right? The way it is in HR 1, in the Big Beautiful Bill, is that it’s following the Hearing Protection Act, or the Constitutional Hearing Protection Act, which basically pulls it out of the NFA, but it’s still subject to a NICS check.

Petrolino: Right.

Pratt: I mean, that’s at least a huge step in the right direction. We’re moving the ball forward, so we’re happy about that. 

Initially they didn’t want to give us that. They just wanted to eliminate the tax and keep all the registration. And again, yeah. I mean, there were other groups. There were groups that were helpful, like you mentioned, the American Suppressor Association. There were other groups that were just fine leaving — just settling for removing the tax, but leaving it in the NFA, and I’ll just leave it at that.

Thankfully the grassroots spoke louder than the lobbyist behind the scenes, saying, “Oh no, let’s just leave it in the NFA.” So they took it out. If the bill were to get to the President’s desk right now as is, suppressors would be out of the NFA. And again, that’s just thanks to the grassroots.

[Note: in the final version of the Big Beautiful Bill, the registration requirements were not removed, just the tax.]

Petrolino: I think a lot of work went into this, for sure.

What are your bellwethers here? What are we feeling next year, 2026? What is the strategy for GOA and the Foundation? Obviously, lobbying is still going on, and as it should, and litigation. What do we see going on? What’s the tea leaves say?

Pratt: A lot of existing litigation will probably still be going on next year. We’ve got cases in New Jersey. We’ve got cases in New York and California. We have almost 30 active lawsuits right now in about 12 states, plus 24 amicus briefs in cases like semi-auto bans.

Well actually, and that could be something that’s exciting, as we’re talking right now, the Supreme Court recently declined to hear a so-called “assault weapons” ban case. But we’ve got our own case in Illinois, and the Supreme Court has said that they do plan to take one up in the next term or two. We’ve got one that’s well situated, one that’s in Illinois and as opposed to the one that they declined to take in Maryland, which only dealt with the firearms, our case in Illinois actually deals with not only the firearms but the magazines as well. So in one case, they can cover a lot more ground. We’re actually very excited about that. This case is just bubbling up through the system right now. 

There’s a lot of cases going on. So that’s one thing. GOA is going to be pursuing a lot of legal action on the legislative side. We want to abolish the ATF gun registry. We want to abolish the ATF…

Petrolino:  The functional yeah, right, exactly…

Pratt: And the underlying laws that they’re enforcing. 

You know, as a stepping stone to getting there for immediate relief, something that actually has, I think, even more, what’s the word? More momentum on Capitol Hill right now is abolishing the gun registering. There’s actually legislation to do that, the No Registry for Rights Act, from Congressman Cloud of Texas. There’s a Senate companion as well. That’s something that’s really important. Through different FOIA requests — one of them was ours — that’s Freedom of Information Act request — and one from representative Cloud, we now know there’s about a billion gun records that the ATF has and around 900 million of them are already digitized. That is reprehensible, and that needs to be abolished. That’s one of the huge pieces of legislation that we’re going to be pushing. 

Obviously taking suppressors and short-barreled firearms out of the NFA. Hopefully that’s something that gets done here in 2025.

Concealed Carry Reciprocity, HR 38, that has been a priority for years. What’s tough about that? You know, earlier, we were talking about how you can stick stuff into a reconciliation bill, and it bypasses the filibuster if it has a budgetary element, it’s something budgetary or tax related. Well, concealed carry reciprocity is not that. That means to push it, it’s going to face the filibuster in the Senate, and that is a challenge. That doesn’t mean we don’t push and we are pushing that. It’s ridiculous that a driver’s license, which doesn’t even protect a constitutional right, is recognized in all 50 states, but your Second Amendment rights stop at your state border in many cases. That’s something that needs to be changed. 

And speaking of concealed carry, we’re at 29 constitutional carry states. Again, that was GOA’s baby that we launched back in the 90s. We want to hit 30 plus states in 2026. 

Petrolino: I think that’s fair. That might be within reach too. I just saw some notices from our friend Paul Valone, from Grassroots North Carolina, and their stuff is moving. It’s happening. I think it’s out of whatever committee. It’s going into another committee. I’ve always said this, I said that North Carolina is probably going to be the last state to enter into permitless carry willingly. But I put a little star behind that, because there is a path for Pennsylvania, I think eventually, but in the foreseeable future, I think North Carolina is going to be the way to go.

Real quick. I do want to change gears, because I had some thought come to mind now, when we were talking about the Brady checks and the permits to carry — foregoing the NICS check. When you had these conversations — because you were actively suing the government on this — when you had these conversations with them, and then they changed their policy, is the lawsuit mooted? Is it done? Is the the suit dropped? What is the status of that? Because I want to understand if we’re going to end up with a presidential thing where the suit can continue to go on, or is it considered mooted? How does that go down? I’m just curious.

Pratt: I would probably need to talk to our attorneys to get an official where we’re at, because, as we’re talking right now, this is relatively recent. 

Petrolino: Right? Yeah.

Pratt: So I will give you my non-attorney opinion, which is pretty dangerous. I think it does, actually. I almost hesitate to do that now that I’ve said that. Yeah, it probably, you know, now what we’re probably looking at is some sort of settlement in the cases, but it certainly takes the case in controversy away, because now Michigan and Alabama, you know people living in those states can once again use their carry permits.

Petrolino: Sure.

Pratt: I think we’re looking at some type of settlement. 

Petrolino: Well, that’s good. 

Pratt: That’s something I can, I can let you know about.

[Note: The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals ordered in Oct. 2025 the lower court’s opinion be vacated and remanded due to mootness concerning the Michigan case.]

Petrolino: I think that’s great. And I had a similar conversation with Cody Wisniewski from FPC Action Foundation at SHOT Show 2025 about some of these suits. Do we want to just continue to carry on because we have that precedent? I was just curious if there was any strategy there.

Erich, I definitely appreciate your time. You’ve been very generous in sharing with me and anybody that’s going to be watching and listening in about what Gun Owners of America and Gun Owners Foundation have been doing. Is there anything that I’ve left on the table that you want to talk about or bring up? Or a message or something that we didn’t get out there, that you’d like to share?

Pratt: I think the biggest thing is just to invite people to become part of the team, if they’re not already. I think again, where our strength is is our grassroots and the fact that we can marshal 2 million plus people. If you’re not getting our email alerts, go to our website, GunOwners.org/Subscribe, and sign up for our alerts. They’re free. We don’t hit you with frivolous type stuff. That is all about engaging people to take action. The more people that we have on our list, the louder our people we have in Washington, D.C. or the state capitals. That would probably be the biggest thing, just come on board and get that information.

When we say, “Hey, you know, target this senator or this representative, give them a call. Be polite, but they need to hear from you.” That’s what we were talking about earlier. That’s how we were able to move from just removing attacks on suppressors to actually pulling it out of the NFA. Because we rang the phones off the hook. GunOwners.org/Subscribe and and obviously, if you like what we’re doing, help keep us on the front lines by supporting us as well.

We want to work together with pro gun people to make this country a better place. Let’s make the Second Amendment great again.

Petrolino: That’s awesome, Erich, GunOwners.org and then also your socials, right? People can check GOA out there — like, follow, subscribe, the whole nine yards. Erich, thank you so much for your time, and we’ll do this again soon, and we’ll catch up.

Pratt: We’d love to. Thanks, John.