Since announcing 32 proposed and final rules to roll back longstanding gun regulations in April, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) Director Robert Cekada and Chief Counsel Robert Leider have asserted in several interviews that the law enforcement agency is no longer concerned with enforcing federal laws and regulations against the gun industry under President Trump. That continued this past Saturday, when Cekada and Leider sat down for an interview at the Second Amendment Foundation’s annual Gun Rights Policy Conference (GRPC) on September 26, 2026.
It is truly unprecedented for ATF leaders to attend the GRPC, let alone speak at it, considering many past conference speakers and attendees have advocated for abolishing the ATF and repealing gun laws more broadly. Other speakers at this year’s GRPC included gun group leaders, legal analysts, and guntubers like Brandon Herrera and Isaac Botkin. The event was also sponsored by gun manufacturers and retailers — including Donald Trump Jr.’s GrabAGun.
Defending the ATF Rollbacks
At the 2026 GRPC, Cekada said that the ATF’s recent rule changes were designed to “repeal regulations that, frankly, were a burden on the American people and the industry and had no effect on public safety.”1Second Amendment Foundation, “2026 Gun Rights Policy Conference – Saturday Session,” YouTube, September 26, 2026, https://www.youtube.com/live/67nEoz0oVLk, at 2:00:00. But this contradicts the ATF’s own findings. For example, in proposals to rescind the ATF’s arm brace rule and double the length of time for which a background check is valid, the agency noted that the changes could increase risks to public safety. With the latter, the ATF even said that the proposal could increase the odds of a prohibited person obtaining a gun and using it “to inflict mass casualties.”
In many other proposals, the ATF either minimized risks to public safety or ignored them altogether — including those that would allow for the destruction of records critical to crime gun tracing, for gun purchases to be completed fully online without any in-person screening, and for easier access to dangerous weapons like machine guns, silencers, and short-barreled firearms.
Cekada also took the opportunity to criticize those who have said the ATF proposals could “make violent crime skyrocket” and lead to more deaths. “It’s just not true,” Cekada said, “But no one takes my word for it.” He added that the ATF is working on additional rules to “mak[e] things better for the American people and the industry.”2Ibid, at 2:21:05.
Throughout the interview, Cekada and Leider repeatedly cited the Second Amendment as the reason for the regulatory rollbacks. After Leider said that the Second Amendment “is at the forefront of all our regulatory efforts,”3Ibid, at 1:58:30. the interviewer, Mark Walters, asked GRPC attendees, “Do you believe you’re hearing this from the ATF at the Gun Rights Policy Conference, guys? It’s wonderful.”4Ibid, at 1:59:09.
Cekada also tried to frame the proposals as an attempt to “clarify confusion” and “simplify things” because some ATF personnel don’t comprehend the regulations they’re tasked with implementing. “There are regulations that my agents are not able to understand, and I didn’t understand them when I was an agent, either.” Rather than implementing measures to ensure ATF personnel are properly trained to understand the federal regulations they are responsible for enforcing, he instead stated, “We shouldn’t impose regulations that we don’t understand.”5Ibid, at 2:00:09.
Letting Gun Dealers off the Hook
Under President Biden, the ATF revoked the licenses of gun dealers who willfully violated federal law by failing to conduct background checks on customers or respond to crime gun tracing requests, falsifying records, or refusing inspections, among other offenses. But last year, the Trump administration rescinded that “zero tolerance” policy and invited dealers who had their licenses revoked to reapply for them.
During the GRPC interview, Cekada attacked the Biden administration for seeing the gun industry as “people who were contributing to more guns being put into the hands of criminals. And that’s just not what was happening. Instead of focusing on criminals and working hard to put criminals in jail, they went the easy route.”6Ibid, at 2:05:42. But Cekada’s comments ignore the ATF’s own data, which shows that 96 percent of recovered crime guns originated from a licensed gun dealer’s inventory through common trafficking methods, such as straw purchasing and theft.
Moments later, Cekada noted that the ATF cited gun dealers for a whopping “80,000 violations” of federal law this year, but “worked with them to get them back on the right track.”7Ibid, at 2:06:16. According to Cekada, gun dealers “have a tough business. It is not easy to make a ton of money working as a federal firearms licensee.”8Ibid, at 2:09:24. He also argued that the ATF must work with dealers to ensure compliance and “help keep the businesses profitable.”9Ibid, at 2:06:33.
What about the dealers who committed serious offenses? Cekada said the ATF has only revoked the licenses of 12 gun dealers this year — compared to 90 from the previous year, which, as Cekada noted, included some cases from the Biden administration.10Ibid, at 2:08:23.
Cekada later boasted that he and Leider “rebuilt” the revocation process so it is much harder for a dealer to lose their license: “In order for a revocation to take place, it actually has to come up to me. It can be recommended in the field, and there are three or four additional layers it has to get through before it comes to me. And if it makes it through those layers and continues to be a revocation, it’s still not a revocation until I say so. And Robert’s folks at the Office of Chief Counsel review those cases.”11Ibid, at 2:12:00.
According to Cekada, the new process is designed to weed out “administrative errors with no malicious intent”12Ibid, at 2:12:48. — echoing a common refrain from the gun industry’s trade association, which has repeatedly framed willful violations of federal law as “minor clerical errors.” This is a marked shift from how the ATF has historically described the intent and purpose of compliance inspections.
Diving Into Politics
While one might expect the leaders of a federal law enforcement agency to remain apolitical and comply with the Hatch Act, Cekada and Leider made their stances loud and clear at the 2026 GRPC. After Leider said that the ATF proposals were one way to “entrench” the Trump administration’s priorities, he reminded attendees that “elections matter. If people who are hostile to the Second Amendment repeatedly get elected, that will get cashed out in terms of a Congress that is hostile to the Second Amendment, an executive branch that is hostile, and ultimately a judiciary that is hostile. So at the end of the day, elections matter, and how people vote will determine the course of how the Second Amendment is respected, whether in law or in policy.”13Ibid, at 2:18:13.
Cekada went further in warning attendees: “There are people who are overtly telling you that it’s their intention, if they get elected into certain positions, to replace the Second Amendment with universal healthcare and other things like that. When people tell you things like that, pay attention. They’re going to do it.”14Ibid, at 2:22:02.
Cekada underscored what elections mean for the ATF proposals: “If there’s another administration in the future that supports the Second Amendment as this one does, that will potentially be six years that these regulations stay in place and can stand on their own in a courtroom.”15Ibid, at 2:22:57.