Trump Reversed Biden’s Gun Trafficking Crackdown, ATF Data Shows

Trump reversed Biden gun trafficking crackdown within months of reclaiming the White House, and new ATF data shows just how swiftly the enforcement landscape shifted. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives referred 30% fewer gun-trafficking charges during Trump's first year than the year prior. At the same time, the number of referrals that federal prosecutors declined to pursue rose. The numbers confirm what former ATF officials had feared: the agency's focus has been deliberately redirected, and the pipeline of illegal firearms is going largely unwatched.

The Zero Tolerance Reset

Under President Joe Biden, the ATF adopted a policy in June 2021 that carried a blunt name: zero tolerance. Dealers found willfully violating the law would lose their licenses. No improvement plans. No second chances. The result was dramatic. License revocations spiked from fewer than 50 in each of 2019, 2020, and 2021 to a record 181 in 2023.

Trump's administration repealed that policy entirely. It went further, inviting dealers whose licenses had been revoked to reapply for new ones. The effect was immediate. There has been a 69% reduction in the number of dealers losing their licenses. Let that number sit for a moment.

Fewer Referrals, More Declinations

The pullback extends beyond dealer enforcement. Federal prosecutors took on trafficking cases with gusto during the Biden years. More than 500 defendants were charged using new trafficking statutes created by the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act of 2022. That law, which got key Republican backing from North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis, added a firearms trafficking conspiracy charge to the federal criminal code along with a new straw-purchasing charge and expanded background checks for buyers under 21.

Now that momentum has reversed. Here is what the ATF data shows:

• 30% fewer gun-trafficking charge referrals during Trump's first year compared to the year prior
• A marked increase in the number of referrals that prosecutors declined
• Hundreds of ATF agents shifted from gun law enforcement to assisting ICE with immigration operations
• A 69% reduction in dealer license revocations after the zero-tolerance policy was repealed

Agents Moved to Immigration Duty

Large numbers of ATF agents have been reassigned from enforcing gun laws to helping Immigration and Customs Enforcement in its campaigns against undocumented immigrants. This is not a minor reshuffling. It represents a wholesale reprioritization of the agency's mission. Agents who had been building trafficking cases, tracing firearms, and working with local prosecutors are now doing work that has nothing to do with the illegal gun trade.

Marianna Mitchem spent 21 years at the ATF, rising to associate assistant director for industry operations. She left the agency last spring, dismayed at the policy reversals, and joined Everytown, the gun-safety group founded by Michael Bloomberg. She described the change in stark terms.

"Just because no one is watching the trafficking pipelines right now doesn't mean guns aren't flowing through it. It just means they're not being intercepted. And as you walk away from that, and you don't have your focus on that anymore, that pipeline is going to be flowing, and we are going to start to see the violent crime impact from that over time."

A Pipeline Unwatched

But there is a catch, and it is one that makes the current moment deceptively quiet. Research has found that the typical "time to crime" for trafficked firearms ranges up to about three years. That means any positive lag from the Biden-era anti-trafficking efforts would still be in effect now. Any negative effects of the Trump pullback lie in the years to come. The homicide rate fell further last year, but criminologists warn against complacency.

The scale of the trafficking problem is enormous. Estimates put the number of guns in the United States at close to 400 million. Of the 2.3 million firearms traced from crime scenes between 2017 and 2023, half were bought less than three years earlier. A staggering 87% were recovered in possession of someone other than the original, legally authorized buyer. Over that period, stores sold almost 1.3 million guns to traffickers that were subsequently recovered in a crime.

The Iron Pipeline's Fastest Route

Consider one case that shows why enforcement matters. In the spring of 2021, Tylon Hardy was summoned to help a friend at a housing development in Middletown, Connecticut. He showed up. He was fatally shot in the back. The gun had been purchased six days earlier at Smokin' Barrel Guns and Ammo in Raleigh, North Carolina, more than 600 miles away. It was a rapid trip up what law enforcement calls the Iron Pipeline, the trafficking channel from southern states with lax gun laws to northern states with stricter ones.

Investigators obtained camera footage from the shop showing a young man emerging after buying the Taurus 9 mm pistol. That footage became the starting point for indictments. Four people were charged with conspiracy to traffic dozens of guns. The ringleader had bought more than 100 guns from straw purchasers. Ten of those guns surfaced at crime scenes in Connecticut and New Jersey. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to more than 10 years in prison.

Daniel Webster, a gun-violence researcher at Johns Hopkins University, put it simply: "We know that a small number of dealers can create a substantial amount of harm, and traffickers as well."

What the Lag Conceals

Daryl McCormick, who retired last year as special agent in charge of Ohio and southern Indiana, described how trafficking investigations can spiderweb outward. A gun used in three shootings might connect to a person linked to three more. The technology that enables this work, the National Integrated Ballistic Information Network, has become far more potent in recent years. Starting in 2016, the ATF created 25 crime gun intelligence centers to process the data. But technology only matters if agents and prosecutors are empowered to use it.

Michael Easley Jr., the Biden-nominated U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of North Carolina, described how prosecutors can send a demand signal. His office would zero in on guns with a short time to crime from the initial sale and see if investigators could build leads from purchase records. His team made its interest plain to the local ATF division. Agents responded. "Prosecutors have the ability to send a demand signal to the marketplace of agents," he said.

The White House declined to comment for the ProPublica report, referring questions to the ATF and the Department of Justice. But the numbers tell a different story than any press statement could. The crackdown that Biden built is gone. The pipeline is still there. And no one is watching.

• Close to 400 million guns are estimated to be in circulation across the United States
• Half of firearms traced from crime scenes were purchased less than three years before recovery
• 87% of traced crime guns were found with someone other than the original buyer
• Typical time to crime for trafficked firearms can stretch up to three years, meaning today's enforcement gaps may shape tomorrow's violence