The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) is the sole federal agency tasked with enforcing federal gun laws and policing the gun industry. So it was surprising to see the agency’s newly confirmed director, Robert Cekada, a longtime ATF insider, flanked by gun lobby and gun industry representatives — including those who advocate for abolishing the ATF altogether — at a press conference in late April.
The Department of Justice and ATF called the press conference to announce 32 rules aimed at rolling back regulations to help the industry sell more guns to more people. (You can watch the gun lobby applaud as Cekada signed the rules here.) While the ATF has long stood as a nonpartisan law enforcement agency, Cekada appears to be leaning into right-wing politics in a way that no previous director has.
Weighing in on Gun Laws
Since becoming head of the ATF, Cekada has gone out of his way to prove that the agency has turned a new leaf in an effort to appease gun groups, particularly those that represent the business interests of the gun industry. For example, he recently appeared on Newsmax to criticize cities and states that prohibit assault weapons and high-capacity magazines for “trying to make rubbish of the Second Amendment.” He also said the Department of Justice was doing a “wonderful job fighting back” against those public safety measures in court.1Newsmax, “Robert Cekada Pushes Back Against Ban on Glock Sales in Democratic-Led States,” Haystack News, June 3, 2026, https://www.haystack.tv/v/robert-cekada-pushes-back-ban-glock-sales-democratic-led-states, at 0:13. Those DOJ lawsuits are unprecedented — just like the ATF director’s comments.
Cekada also derided newly enacted state laws prohibiting Glock-style pistols that are uniquely easy to convert into machine guns with third-party devices called “switches.” Cekada said that “holding Glock accountable for what a criminal’s doing with that firearm makes zero sense,”2Ibid, at 0:51. and that the state laws won’t “do anything. Criminals do not follow the law as it is.”3Ibid, at 0:47.
It’s truly disturbing to hear the head of a law enforcement agency parroting a gun lobby talking point and logical fallacy — that criminals break laws, so we shouldn’t have any. But it’s also extraordinary for an ATF director to even comment on state gun laws, let alone disparage them. How are state laws within the purview of the ATF? What else does Cekada have opinions on? The war in Iran, tariffs, the White House ballroom? Any way you look at his comments, he appears to be going out of his way to gain the admiration of right-wing pundits and far-right gun groups. After Newsmax, what’s next — interviews with right-wing influencers?
Meeting With Colion Noir
Well actually, yes. Cekada recently sat down for an interview with Colion Noir, a former NRA spokesperson and guntuber who mocked survivors of the Parkland shooting and regularly rails against commonsense gun safety measures.
During the interview, Cekada noted that he had paused the Biden administration’s “zero tolerance” policy cracking down on problematic gun dealers early on in the Trump administration before it was formally ended,4Colion Noir, “The ATF Director Just Said What Gun Owners Have Been Waiting To Hear,” YouTube, June 10, 2026, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wEQTop6CgMQ, at 12:24. and that the ATF has since decided to focus on “things that were really annoying” to various “gun communities” and the gun industry,5Ibid, at 12:35. like the ATF’s approval process for National Firearms Act (NFA) applications to own silencers, short-barreled rifles and shotguns, and other dangerous weapons.
While the ATF has dramatically sped up its handling of NFA applications in recent years, Cekada told Noir that he had tasked the agency with finding ways to speed up approvals even further under Trump, even calling in DOGE for an assist,6Ibid, at 26:15. and was “completely impressed” when his son got approved to own a silencer in 48 hours.7Ibid, at 25:30. Cekada also used the moment to tout the new ATF proposal making it easier for people to cross state lines with silencers and other NFA weapons, which he said will help people join “short notice” hunting trips.8Ibid, at 22:43.
Another “annoyance,” according to Cekada, was the ATF’s “arm brace” rule, which helped clarify that short-barreled AR-15s equipped with stabilizing braces — like the kind used in at least five mass shootings — are indeed short-barreled rifles subject to NFA registration requirements. Cekada, who signed a new ATF proposal to rescind the arm brace rule, admitted that he owns at least two of these guns but “didn’t want to pay another damn tax” for them.9Ibid, at 17:59. (The NFA previously levied a $200 tax on short-barreled rifles, but it was zeroed out by Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act.)
Cekada assured Noir and his viewers that the ATF is “not pursuing America’s gun owners who are attaching a stabilizing brace and shouldering a rifle that may or may not be a short-barreled rifle.”10Ibid, at 16:03. Yet he also warned that, due to the plain language of the NFA, a U.S. attorney could charge someone for having an unregistered short-barreled rifle if one is discovered while executing a search warrant.11Ibid, at 16:21. In other words, he’ll leave NFA enforcement to others, not the ATF.
THE ATF’S DIRECTION UNDER CEKADA
A larger question concerns the gun industry’s role here. What about the companies producing and selling short-barreled ARs and AKs with arm braces right now? Are they violating the NFA?
During his sit-down with Noir, Cekada said attempts at regulating short-barreled firearms were misguided — even after hearing from survivors of gun violence12Ibid, at 19:18. — because “any tool, any object, can be used in a malicious way,”13Ibid, at 18:25. and “the focus should not be on the particular firearm. It needs to be on the people who are breaking the law and using that firearm criminally, and we need to hammer those guys in our prosecutions and later in our sentences.”14Ibid, at 20:57.
Like those he made on Newsmax, such gun policy comments might as well have been ripped from an old NRA press release, and they’re truly alarming coming from someone whose agency not only has the power to go after criminals, but also the industry that keeps arming them with military-grade weapons and pushing the boundaries of federal law.
Just to illustrate the unprecedented nature of an ATF director talking to right-wing media outlets, one could only imagine if a previous ATF director had taken to a tour of left-wing media outlets to call for state-level bans on assault weapons. Cekada’s media tour politicizes the ATF in a way that is harmful for the agency’s long-term success and survival, which is predicated on having a neutral and nonpartisan stature among lawmakers and the American people.
Cekada’s remarks, paired with those made recently by the ATF’s chief counsel, raise serious questions. Will the ATF enforce federal gun laws and keep the gun industry in check, or will it keep doing the bidding of gun groups that have spent decades vilifying the ATF and hobbling it at every turn?
The clearest answer comes from the ATF’s new rules, which show that the agency has been captured by the very industry it is supposed to regulate. When asked if he understood that concept of industry capture during a House Oversight Committee hearing in May, Cekada said he just heard about it that very morning.15C-SPAN, “ATF Director Testifies on Firearms Policy and Second Amendment Protections,” May 14, 2026, https://www.c-span.org/program/house-committee/atf-director-testifies-on-firearms-policy-and-second-amendment-protections/679182, at 32:31.