If agents with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) suspect that someone is straw-purchasing or trafficking firearms during an active criminal investigation, they can ask the FBI to notify them if that person attempts to purchase another firearm from a licensed dealer. The notification is called a National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) alert or flag. But in late April, the ATF published a memo imposing multiple approvals “for future use of NICS alerts” and announcing that the agency is reviewing “all current alerts.”
Essentially, the ATF under President Trump is making it harder for its agents to identify and stop gun traffickers — a directive at odds with the agency’s own mission and Trump’s “tough on crime” agenda.
The new guidelines are part of the ATF’s new “New Era of Reform,” which it described as being “marked by transparency, accountability, and partnership with the firearms industry.” Those reforms include rescinding the “zero tolerance” policy of revoking the licenses of gun dealers who willfully violated federal law, announcing that dealers who had their licenses revoked may reapply, publishing a new administrative action policy directing ATF personnel to be much more lenient on dealers going forward, and allowing more state permits to qualify as “Brady alternatives” to bypass background checks on gun sales.
new nics alert policy
For years, ATF agents have used NICS alerts — including during the first Trump administration — to identify and investigate straw purchasers and gun traffickers, and prevent guns from falling into the wrong hands. But according to the new memo, “NICS alerts may only be utilized in cases involving suspected violations of federal firearm statutes,” not state laws, and agents must receive approval from both a special agent in charge and a deputy assistant director at the headquarter level before initiating an alert.
ATF agents must submit a written request form to the special agent in charge that includes a “list of suspected federal firearm violations,” a “summary of [the] suspect’s activity to date,” and the “requested length of the NICS alert” — up to 180 days.
If the special agent in charge approves the request, the ATF agent must then submit it to Field Management Staff to receive approval from the deputy assistant director. And if the requesting agent wants to renew the NICS alert after 180 days, they will have to start the process all over again and receive additional approvals from the ATF’s deputy director and chief counsel.
Finally, the memo notes that all current NICS alerts must be renewed using this procedure.
hindering investigations
In the past, the ATF stressed the importance of data-driven enforcement strategies and early detection mechanisms to stop firearms from reaching criminal networks. The agency’s own case study shows that gun traffickers obtained their firearms from straw purchases in nearly 40 percent of investigations between 2017 and 2021.
But this new NICS alert policy signals a reversal, implementing administrative hurdles that will impede or even halt trafficking investigations altogether.
While the ATF did not state why it issued the new guidance, Gun Owners of America (GOA), a far-right gun group that opposes all gun safety measures — even background checks on gun sales — and counts several gun manufacturers as “partners,” has fearmongered about the NICS alert system since at least 2021, claiming that it involved monitoring people for “buying too many guns.” The group later spun the law enforcement tool as a “covert, warrantless surveillance program of an untold number of law-abiding firearm purchasers.”
More recently, in April, an AmmoLand author and GOA state director said the program “gives gun rights activists one more reason to push Congress to defund, defang, and eventually disband the ATF.” Days later, Senator Rand Paul announced that he had written a letter to the ATF’s acting director requesting more information about the NICS alert system, citing GOA materials. The statement included comments from a GOA lobbyist.
GOA also celebrated the ATF’s recent decision to allow more state permits as acceptable substitutes for background checks as “major victories.”
This shift in policy may appease gun groups, but it does so at the expense of public safety, drastically reducing the ATF’s ability to intervene before firearms are trafficked and moved to illegal markets, used in shootings, and recovered from crime scenes. It leaves the ATF less equipped to detect and disrupt the very criminal activity it is charged with preventing.