ATF Director Courts the Firearms Industry in Series of Interviews

Robert Cekada, the director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), spent October appearing in several interviews with gun media outlets, groups like the National Rifle Association, and even Brandon Herrera, a controversial guntuber who recently lost his bid to represent Texas’ 23rd congressional district in the U.S. House of Representatives.¹ Across the interviews, Cekada discussed how the ATF has changed under President Trump, including regulatory rollbacks and the unprecedented decision to no longer enforce key provisions of the National Firearms Act (NFA) of 1934.

Since becoming the ATF’s director, Cekada has gone out of his way to appeal to gun groups — including those who have called for abolishing the ATF and the gun laws it is tasked with enforcing. The interviews also serve as further evidence that the ATF is more focused on protecting the industry that it is supposed to oversee and regulate.

Failing to Enforce Federal Law

Many of Cekada’s interviews focused on the ATF’s decision to no longer enforce the NFA’s nearly century-old application and registration requirements for silencers (or sound suppressors), short-barreled rifles and shotguns, and other easily concealed firearms. In August, a federal judge barred the Department of Justice (DOJ) and ATF from enforcing those provisions against the plaintiffs in Silencer Shop Foundation v. ATF, but the agency recently issued guidance saying it had dramatically expanded the covered parties to include all Americans.

During an interview with Stephen Gutowski of The Reload, Cekada said that “we were very much focused on figuring out a path [to] extending the benefits of the injunction not only to the plaintiffs in this case, but, frankly, to all the American people who are law-abiding citizens so that they can enjoy their Second Amendment freedoms as well.”² (Cekada was joined by Robert Leider for this interview, who subsequently resigned from his position as ATF chief counsel just before the midterm elections.)

Cekada went further during his interview with Brandon Herrera, framing the ATF’s “nonenforcement” policy as a step toward to “remov[ing] any infringements upon the Second Amendment.”³ As he was explaining that individuals no longer needed ATF approval to make or purchase those NFA items, Herrera interjected, “Or just be really quiet about it.”⁴

Instead of challenging the suggestion that individuals could simply conceal their noncompliance with federal law, Cekada responded, “Yes. And not everybody in America is good about keeping it quiet. But bottom line, this eliminates a lot of those hurdles for folks.”⁵ The exchange was particularly striking given Cekada’s position as the head of the federal law enforcement agency tasked with enforcing the NFA.

In an interview with Legally Armed America’s Paul Glasco, Cekada acknowledged that while the DOJ and ATF had decided not to fully enforce the NFA, the underlying law had not been repealed. “Technically,” he said, owning an unregistered NFA item is “still in violation of the National Firearms Act, because we did not repeal the National Firearms Act.”⁶ He also warned that “a little over two years from now, Rob Cekada can be fired. There could be a new attorney general, and someone could say, ‘Hey, we rescind all of this stuff, and we are going to take enforcement action.’”⁷

From Regulator to Partner

In an interview with the Sonoran Desert Institute, an online gunsmithing academy that sponsors guntubers, Cekada discussed how he has reshaped the ATF under President Trump, including steering the agency away from holding the gun industry “accountable for what criminals were doing.”⁸ He took credit for ending the ATF’s “zero tolerance” policy of revoking the licenses of gun dealers who willfully violate federal law — including by transferring firearms to prohibited purchasers, failing to conduct required background checks, and falsifying records — and the Demand Letter 2 program, which was implemented in 2000 as a way for the ATF to monitor dealers that sell high volumes of firearms later recovered from crime scenes.⁹

Cekada bizarrely framed his decisions as “pivoting everyone to focus on holding criminals accountable”¹⁰ and claimed that the ATF had been too “focused on regulatory enforcement” under President Biden,¹¹ when Cekada served as the deputy assistant director of field operations before becoming the executive assistant director of operations.

Unlike any previous ATF director, Cekada also spoke out against the lawsuits that have been filed to hold gun manufacturers and dealers responsible for harms associated with their products and business practices. He said the lawsuits were an attempt to hold members of the gun industry “accountable for what the criminal element does, as if they were conspiring together. And that’s just not the case. It’s not what we’re seeing.”¹² Although Cekada did not identify any particular lawsuit, his remarks are notable coming from the head of the federal agency responsible for regulating the gun industry.

During the Legally Armed America interview, host Paul Glasco told Cekada that he had “liquidated” 40 to 50 firearms since March — despite not holding a federal firearms license — and asked, “Do I have to worry about you guys coming to my door because I was engaged in the business?”¹³ Cekada did not comment on the lawfulness of those transactions, but later in the interview, he said that “even when it relates to firearms trafficking and people that are dealing in firearms without a license, it’s people that are directly involved in violent crimes that we’re focused on, not someone that may be selling firearms to their friends or neighbors in the course of enhancing their personal collection.”¹⁴

Although federal law permits certain private sales, it prohibits engaging in the business of dealing firearms without a license, regardless of whether the transactions are connected to a separate violent offense.

The Director’s Partisan Remarks

In two of his interviews, Cekada explicitly linked the future of ATF’s regulatory changes to the outcome of the midterm elections. He told Legally Armed America that the “American people need to decide whether they like the path that we’re on now or not…and should go out and vote if they want things to stay the way that they like right now.”¹⁵

He also said, “There’s a lot more to do over these next two years, and the only way we continue to make that progress is by people making the right decision and voting for folks that will support the president’s agendas as it relates to upholding the Constitution and protecting the Second Amendment.”¹⁶

Cekada made similar comments with Herrera, acknowledging that he faced restrictions on what he could say about elections while nevertheless encouraging viewers to consider the political consequences of their votes. “I can’t tell people who to vote for. I know I’m not allowed to say certain things, and I won’t go too far. But bottom line, elections matter,” Cekada told Herrera, who was a congressional candidate at the time.¹⁷

Later in that same interview, he added, “The American people need to vote correctly. And when I say ‘correctly,’ vote with your brains and your hearts knowing that your decision will have an outcome on what you like, as it relates to this administration’s work in preserving the Second Amendment and holding criminals accountable the way they should be.”¹⁸

Addressing Past Controversies

Federal law requires gun makers and dealers to submit their gun sales and inventory records to the ATF when they cease operating. While these out-of-business records are critical to crime gun tracing, gun groups allege that the ATF uses them to maintain an illegal firearms registry.

During an interview with Shooting News Weekly, Cekada defended the ATF’s collection of those records while simultaneously promoting an ATF proposal that would allow gun makers and dealers to destroy those records after 20 or 30 years. “For the first time ever, we also proposed destroying the records that are outside that range so that nobody could ever create a registry,” Cekada said.¹⁹

While such a change could lead to thousands of investigations going cold, Cekada maintained that the rule would help people “trust the government,”²⁰ an admission that the ATF is more focused on perception and conspiracy theories than public safety.

Glasco also said that Cekada had invited him to the ATF’s headquarters to see how the agency stores those out-of-business records,²¹ even after Glasco questioned Cekada about the fatal March 2024 shooting of Bryan Malinowski during an ATF search of his Arkansas home. Glasco characterized Malinowski’s death as a murder and described him as “clearly not a threat,”²² despite the fact that Malinowski fired upon ATF agents during the operation. An Arkansas prosecutor subsequently determined that the agent who fatally shot Malinowski was justified in using deadly force, but Cekada continued the conversation without directly challenging Glasco’s framing of Malinowski’s death as a murder.²³

A Different Vision for the ATF

Taken together, the interviews make it clear that Cekada sees the firearms industry primarily as a partner with aligned priorities rather than the subject of the agency’s regulatory oversight mandate. But important questions remain, including the consequences of reducing regulatory oversight, suspending information gathering programs, and potentially destroying historical firearms transaction records.

Herrera himself praised Cekada for “making decisions and leading [the ATF] in ways that I agree with” and being “so communicative with the gun industry. I mean, you’re going to these policy conferences, you’re talking to the industry, you’re talking to the community.”²⁴ Herrera said, “Man, we really just appreciate the hell out of you.”²⁵

ATF Director Courts the Firearms Industry in Series of Interviews

Failing to Enforce Federal Law

From Regulator to Partner

The Director’s Partisan Remarks

Addressing Past Controversies

A Different Vision for the ATF

Important Resources

Gun Makers Mix Assault Weapons, Silencers, and Candy for Halloween

Leave Assault Weapons to the States? Congress Already Did.

FBI Finalizes Rule for Gun Shop Employee Background Checks

Failing to Enforce Federal Law

From Regulator to Partner

The Director’s Partisan Remarks

Addressing Past Controversies

A Different Vision for the ATF

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Gun Makers Mix Assault Weapons, Silencers, and Candy for Halloween

Leave Assault Weapons to the States? Congress Already Did.

FBI Finalizes Rule for Gun Shop Employee Background Checks