Freshly Minted ATF Director Robert Cekada and the “New Era of Reform”

The Senate confirmed President Donald Trump’s pick to lead the ATF, Robert Cekada, Wednesday, April 29 – and he wasted no time in getting to work. Shortly after confirmation, Cekada joined Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche in announcing the overhaul of 34 regulations. Most of those were administrative and don’t translate downstream to real-world differences felt by everyday Americans, but some were, as you’ll forgive the pun, bombshells.

Big Changes at the ATF

The Senate’s confirmation came Wednesday in a 59-39 vote, as six Democrats – John Fetterman (PA), Tim Kaine (VA), Jeanne Shaheen (NH), Maggie Hassan (NH), Sheldon Whitehouse (RI), and Amy Klobuchar (MN) – crossed the aisle to side with all 52 present and voting Republicans. Independent Angus King of Maine, who generally caucuses with Democrats, joined in as well, and one from each major party – Angela Alsobrooks (D-MD) and Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) – abstained. Cekada was the first ATF director to be confirmed after being nominated by a Republican president, and only the third in total since the position was changed in 2006 to require Seante confirmation.

Cekada has worked in law enforcement since 1992, has been with the ATF since 2005, and previously served as deputy director. “In my time with the ATF, I’ve seen how regulation creep can come in like a fog, creating vague and shifting tests and subjective interpretations that lead to inconsistent enforcement practices,” he said during a joint appearance with Acting AG Todd Blanche at the DOJ headquarters. Cekada’s confirmation represents a change in how Trump, who previously had argued for eliminating the ATF and merging it with the DEA, approaches the agency. Rather than cutting funding and function, now the administration is asking for an increase in funding for it – and the pick of a permanent director further demonstrates the president’s new plan.

Back in February of 2025, President Trump launched what he called the “new era of reform” for the ATF. In an executive order titled “Protecting Second Amendment rights,” Trump ordered the US AG to:

“Examine all orders, regulations, guidance, plans, international agreements, and other actions of executive departments and agencies (agencies) to assess any ongoing infringements of the Second Amendment rights of our citizens, and present a proposed plan of action to the President though the Domestic Policy Advisor, to protect the Second Amendment rights of all Americans.”

Enter Cekada and Blanche and the agency’s list of rule changes.

The New Era of Reform

Everything the administration has done so far in this so-called “new era” has been organized into five different categories on the ATF website. The “clarify,” “modernize,” “align,” and to some extent “reduce burden” groups focus mostly on agency processes and the regulations pertaining to businesses and other states and countries, though some rules would affect everyday Americans in certain situations. For example, one rule change eliminates the requirement for anyone transporting an NFA firearm for short-term purposes (defined as 365 days or fewer) to give advance notice to the ATF and wait for approval. As well, there’s a “clarification” of the rules under the Gun Control Act regarding interstate transportation. Then there’s joint registration for spouses.

What does this mean for gun owners? Well, spouses with NFA items will no longer have to jump through legal hoops to or face potential felony prosecution for “transferring” those items between themselves. As well, “reasonably necessary” activities during travel, like overnight stops, refueling, maintenance, emergency stops, medical treatments, meals, etc. are all covered under the Firearm Owner’s Protection Act as legal and necessary parts of “transport.” Under the “align” group, the ATF lists changing the NFA tax on certain items to $0, as ordered by the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

The “repeal” group, though, is where most of the big-ticket items – at least as far as the average gun owner is probably concerned. It revises the definition of machine gun in response to the Supreme Court’s 2024 ruling in Garland v. Cargill, making it so that bump stocks don’t turn a semiautomatic rifle into a machine gun, legally. It removes the Biden-era rule that any pistol with a stabilizing brace is now an SBR (short-barreled rifle). Under this rule, adding a brace to a pistol build put that firearm in the highly regulated and taxed category of NFA items along with machine guns and silencers.

The ATF is also undoing the so-called “gun show loophole” rule, which created a stricter definition of who is “engaged in the business” of selling firearms. Originally, a private party could sell a firearm to another private party and it be no big deal. However, the ironically named Bipartisan Safer Communities Act signed into law by Joe Biden, imposed a tighter limit on how many firearms a person might sell before being considered “engaged in the business” – which, for anyone not licensed, means felony prosecution if caught. Put simply, anyone who sells a single firearm as a private party once – or even just from time to time in the natural course of changing firearms – is fine. But if you’re making a business out of being an arms dealer, then you’d better be a federally licensed arms dealer. The concern with the Biden-era law was that, rather than closing some non-existent “gun show loophole,” it would actually criminalize simple, organic private party sales. To be clear, while there may have been at some time and some place on occasion an unlicensed person selling firearms outside, that certainly is not the norm. Gun shows are actually quite tightly regulated and it has never since the establishment of the federal firearm license been legal for Joe Blow from down the road to set up a table and sell guns without said license.

“The Second Amendment is not a second-class right,” US Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said Wednesday. “This Department of Justice is ending the weaponization of federal authority against law-abiding gun owners.” Blanche called it the “most comprehensive reform package in the history” of the ATF.