In a recent interview with The Reload, Robert Leider, chief counsel of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), discussed the raft of rules proposed by the agency in April that threaten to upend federal gun regulations and allow more guns to fall into the wrong hands. Leider, who helped draft the rules, said the ATF’s goal was “clearing out regulations that unnecessarily burden [gun] dealers” and can lead to license revocations, all to help create a “21st century” firearms market.1The Reload, “ATF Chief Counsel Robert Leider Explains the Bureau’s New Gun Rules,” YouTube, May 18, 2026, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G92D__DCFQM&t, at 8:01.
Leider’s comments, discussed below, serve as further evidence that President Trump’s ATF is more focused on placating the gun industry than enforcing federal gun laws, combatting illegal gun trafficking, and protecting the public.
Unpacking Leider’s Remarks
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 to be inspected, among other offenses. But in April 2025, the Trump administration rescinded that “zero tolerance” policy and invited dealers who had their licenses revoked to reapply for them, as discussed in a recent ProPublica report.
Leider said that the goal of the new ATF rules is to go beyond just reversing the “zero tolerance” policy of the prior administration, but to “rip it out root and branch” by cutting regulations that might lead to violations in the first place. According to Leider, “If there’s no underlying regulatory violation, there is nothing in the future to be the subject of future discretionary enforcement actions.”2Ibid, at 8:33.
In other words, if the ATF doesn’t cite a gun dealer for violating federal law now, repeat violations won’t lead to a license revocation down the road — a startling admission from the agency’s top lawyer. Rather than ensuring that licensed gun dealers follow the law, Leider’s approach is to weaken the agency’s oversight of dealers and create more leeway for them to violate the law without repercussions.
Leider also stated that the ATF had proposed two rules specifically to address what he called “more technical” violations incurred by dealers: doubling the 30-day period for which a background check is valid and accepting more state permits as substitutes for background checks. In doing so, he downplayed the harm in dealers transferring guns on “day 31 or 32 or 33 after the background check,” as if someone couldn’t become prohibited from possessing a gun in that time frame, or a Texas gun dealer accepting an Iowa concealed-carry permit from a customer instead of running a background check, which is illegal.3Ibid, at 10:34. See also 18 U.S. Code § 922(t)(3)(A)(II).
downplaying paperwork “Errors”
Another ATF proposal is a drastically edited Form 4473, the form buyers and dealers must complete for every gun sale, that dispenses with several questions used to stop illegal straw purchases and determine if customers can legally possess guns. While the ATF’s stated goal is making “it easier and faster for respondents and licensees to complete the form,” it will also be harder for investigators to determine that a gun dealer had a hand in any illegal sales.
In the interview, Leider said that he wanted to simplify the Form 4473 “so that there are fewer errors,” and admitted that the number of gun dealers cited for violations because they did not complete the form correctly “was really astounding.”4Ibid, at 3:04. Such “errors” can aid gun traffickers and impede law enforcement efforts to trace crime guns, but the ATF appears to be more focused on hiding them than addressing the underlying problems.
The current form, which only has three pages to complete, has a series of yes-or-no questions asking if you are buying the gun for someone else, have been convicted of a felony, or were dishonorably discharged from the military, among others. The current form also includes extensive instructions to help explain the questions being asked. But Leider said the “form itself is confusing,” and, incredibly, that “you kind of drunk drive your way through the questions.”5Ibid, at 3:35.
Gun dealers must stop a sale if a customer notes that they are prohibited from possessing a gun on the Form 4473. But Leider defended dealers who proceeded with the transactions anyway, arguing that “somebody just made an error on the form” and “people make mistakes,” including “dealers who have high volumes in transactions.”6Ibid, at 4:19.
Leider’s remarks mirror those made by the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF), the gun industry’s trade association, which repeatedly claimed that gun dealers had their licenses revoked under the “zero tolerance” policy for making “minor clerical errors.” But these “clerical errors” make it more difficult to identify illegal sales on the front end and for law enforcement to trace these guns when they show up at a crime scene.
no-show gun sales
Leider said many ATF proposals were aimed at modernizing the firearms market, including one that would allow people to purchase guns online and have them shipped directly to their doors, without visiting a brick-and-mortar gun store.
The ATF and NSSF have both stated that gun dealers are the “first line of defense” in combating gun trafficking because they can spot red flags indicating straw purchases and other illegal sales and assess their customers’ apparent mental health during the in-person transaction at the gun store. But Leider dismissed those concerns and denigrated gun dealers. He claimed that a “no show” gun sale allowed under this ATF proposal, using software to verify a customer’s identification, would be “more buttoned up than an over-the-counter sale” where a gun store employee “might just glance very briefly at the identification.”7Ibid, at 22:28. According to Leider, “under the current system, nothing” — apparently, not even a gun dealer trained by the ATF or NSSF — “stops a straw purchaser from buying a lot of guns in somebody else’s name and just telling the straw purchaser, ‘Go to the store and pick these up.’”8Ibid, at 23:11.
When asked if the ATF proposal would help GrabAGun, an online firearms retailer backed by Donald Trump Jr., become the “Amazon of guns,” Leider said, “I reject the pejorative connotation of it. I mean this is, I think, paradigmatically what we are doing here right now. The nature of the marketplace has changed. You cannot expect the gun industry to operate in a 1960s-style marketplace in the 2020s. Markets have moved online. Gun sales have moved online.”9Ibid, at 21:23.
Leider’s remarks imply that firearms are as harmless as any other product sold online, and the reference to the 1960s is notable, as the Gun Control Act of 1968 was enacted to prohibit mail-order gun sales. Even Leider admitted that the ATF proposal is an “expansion” of federal law10Ibid, at 18:40. — one the agency estimates would bring in 3.28 million more gun sales for the industry.