After reports that American-made firearms were flooding “some of the most violent countries in the world,” fueling crime, gun violence, and political instability, the Department of Commerce issued an interim final rule in April 2024 that tightened firearms export requirements, improved oversight over where U.S. guns end up, and promoted national security and foreign policy interests.
The need for such oversight was undeniable. A February 2025 Government Accountability Office (GAO) report revealed that U.S. export licenses were aiding the flow of weapons into the hands of cartels, corrupt police and military forces, and authoritarian governments. Tracing data from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) revealed that at least 11 percent of guns recovered at crime scenes abroad between 2017 and 2021 had been lawfully exported from the United States.
In October 2022, a legally exported Sig Sauer P365 was used in a mass shooting at a preschool in Thailand that left 36 people dead, including 23 children. In August 2023, a U.S.-made firearm was diverted from Peru to Ecuador and used to assassinate a presidential candidate. The Commerce Department also identified firearms exports to Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan that were diverted to Russia and may have been used to support its invasion of Ukraine. The 2024 rule was implemented to ensure those kinds of transfers were prevented.
But in a stunning reversal, the Commerce Department under President Trump has torn that framework apart, issuing a final rule on September 30, 2025, that rescinds nearly every protective measure the 2024 rule created and restoring the export landscape to its pre-2024 state — a system already criticized for enabling widespread diversion of U.S. weapons abroad. It also repealed another rule, finalized in 2022, that required the department to notify Congress of certain export license applications for semi-automatic firearm sales exceeding $4 million.
trump’s new rule
The Commerce Department states that “the final rule is intended to be less burdensome on the firearms industry” and eliminates nearly all of the safeguards created by the 2024 rule. For example, the agency has rolled back the presumption of denial put in place by the Biden administration for exports to 36 high-risk countries as well as those with U.S. arms embargoes. Exporters could only overcome a presumption of denial by demonstrating that a specific transaction did not present a substantial risk of diversion or misuse.
Additionally, the Commerce Department will no longer require certain documents to approve export license applications, including purchase orders, import certificates, or buyers’ passports — meaning the department can no longer adequately evaluate the intended recipient of firearms, especially in high-risk countries. In a press release announcing the final rule, the department even questioned that State Department designation for the countries, saying they are “supposedly ‘high-risk.’”
The new rule also restores license validity periods from one year back to four years, abolishes an interagency working group designed to “evaluate firearm diversion and misuse risks on a country‐by‐country basis,” and eliminates automatic congressional notifications for semi-automatic firearm exports, reducing transparency and oversight over where U.S. guns are shipped.
The only piece of the 2024 rule that remains in the new rule is the set of Export Control Classification Numbers that distinguish semi-automatic rifles, pistols, shotguns, and related parts from other types of firearms. The department argues these categories will help with reporting obligations under international arms control agreements.
Another handout to the gun industry
The gun industry was quick to celebrate the rollbacks. The National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF), the gun industry’s trade association — which successfully lobbied for the first Trump administration to relax firearm export regulations by shifting oversight from State to Commerce — boasted that it worked “closely with lawmakers on Capitol Hill and the Trump administration to remove these onerous, overreaching and punishing export restrictions that did not improve public safety in foreign countries and only served to starve U.S.-based businesses by eliminating the ability to compete in global markets.”
The NSSF claimed that the 2024 rule had “throttled” firearm and ammunition exports to foreign markets and “cost the firearm industry an estimated $500 million in lost business annually.” Such a loss follows months of declining gun sales. In July, estimated monthly gun sales dropped below 1 million for the first time in nearly six years.
The Commerce Department’s final rule states that the previous rule “imposed too great a burden on U.S. exporters” and was “economically counterproductive.” In other words, as the final rule states, it “negatively affected the U.S. firearms industry.” That’s why the Trump administration repealed it, allowing “U.S. firearms manufacturers to compete in overseas markets, creating hundreds of millions of dollars per year in export opportunities” for companies like Glock, Ruger, Sig Sauer, and Smith & Wesson, who have long dominated the global export market.
In 2022 alone, prior to the 2024 rule, U.S. gun makers exported more than 629,000 firearms, nearly double the number they exported in 2019. These admissions prove that the Trump administration is more concerned about protecting the gun industry and its bottom line than protecting U.S. national security, foreign policy interests, and public safety at home.
easing firearm exports
By dismantling the 2024 Commerce rule, the administration has reopened the pipeline for American-made firearms to flow to high-risk countries with minimal safeguards. Without the presumption of denial for high-risk destinations, exports to fragile or abusive regimes are more likely to be approved. Without congressional notification, lawmakers and the public will be kept in the dark about controversial shipments.
The GAO has already warned that U.S. approved firearms exports have fueled violence, enabled corruption, and destabilized fragile governments abroad — countering the NSSF’s claims. The ATF has also traced tens of thousands of crime guns back to lawful U.S. exports. By loosening these export controls, the Trump administration is once again prioritizing industry profits over human rights, transparency, and safety.