https://www.lewrockwell.com/2026/07/no_author/legacy-media-triggered-over-trump-admins-shot-at-gun-regulations/
By Paul Dragu
The New American
July 9, 2026
The Trump administration is triggering hysteria in legacy media ranks over its agenda to relax gun rules.
They’re rolling back a “tsunami” of gun regulations, Axios announced over the weekend, adding that “the effect critics fear is more guns moving with less federal scrutiny.”
The New York Times told readers on Sunday, “Trump Administration Rolls Back Dozens of Gun Regulations.” The Times leads with this opening: Oz, Ottie Check Amazon for Pricing.
The Trump administration is scrapping more than three dozen firearms regulations, abandoning a crackdown on illegal sales, restoring gun rights to some people with mental illness and loosening oversight of private weapons transactions
These rollbacks would reportedly “let Americans ship handguns in the mail, gut Biden-era background check rules and make it harder to yank a gun dealer’s license.”
Rule Changes
Some of these regulatory changes or proposals have been in motion for some time during Trump’s second term. Back in April, the ATF announced changes that would “reduce burdens on law-abiding gun owners and businesses.” An ATF spokesperson said the point was to shift focus to “willful violators and criminal actors, not inadvertent compliance issues by responsible owners and licensees.” The changes included streamlining rules and regulations on forms to make it easier on gun dealers and owners. It also included a ban reversal on “non-lethal training ammunition and dual-use barrels.” You can read more about the changes here.
Some of the changes are simply reversals of Biden-era rules.
A spokesperson from the anti-gun organization Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence bemoaned the policy shifts. It “takes us back 100 years,” Kris Brown told the Times. “It’s really decimating A.T.F.’s ability to regulate this industry.… This is, to us, absolutely the gun industry’s wish list.”
Resource Rerout
That might be true (who says that’s a bad thing?), but it’s also clearing up time and resources for the ATF to better pursue real criminals. According to a press release from last week, the ATF, in its own words, “has recorded significant results since shifting its enforcement priorities in 2025 to refocus on violent crime, transnational criminal organizations, and illegal pipelines supplying them firearms.” In 2025, the ATF
saw substantial increases in criminal referrals and charges compared to 2024. Referrals to the Department of Justice rose sharply across the six firearms‑related statutes, including straw purchasing, which increased 182%; trafficking, which rose 129%; and false statements under [U.S. law], which increased 135%. Overall, referrals across all six trafficking statutes climbed from 155% year over year. Criminal charges followed a similar trend, with charges across all six trafficking statutes increasing 57% year over year. Roughly a quarter of all ATF-initiated violent crime cases involve investigating firearms trafficking to Mexico.
Mental Defectives and Mail Guns
As for the part about loosening gun ownership rules for the supposed mentally ill, that’s referring to proposed ATF rules that aim to change the definition of who is legally classified as mentally unfit to own firearms.
The Gun Control Act of 1968 (GCA) bans anyone “who has been adjudicated as a mental defective or who has been committed to a mental institution” from possessing firearms or ammunition. It also prohibits people from selling or giving a firearm to someone they believe “has been adjudicated as a mental defective or has been committed to any mental institution at 16 years of age or older.” The government lists in the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) who those people are. Sterling, Rick Check Amazon for Pricing.
The criteria for who is mentally defective includes someone who is a danger to himself, can’t manage his own affairs, or has been found insane by a court. In its enforcement definition, the ATF included definitions from the Veterans Affairs department, which states a “mentally incompetent person is one who because of injury or disease lacks the mental capacity to contract or to manage his or her own affairs, including disbursement of funds without limitation.” So, the ATF added to its list of banned people those whom the VA said were bad at managing their finances.
The ATF says that its definitions of who may not have a gun has been, for decades, too broad. “ATF believes its current regulation defining ‘adjudicated as a mental defective’ is overbroad because it encompasses individuals who do not suffer from the kinds of mental disabilities that fell within the term ‘mental defective,’”says the ATF. Moreover:
Those with isolated functional deficits are not the kind of individuals who were understood to be mentally defective as that term was used in the GCA. Nor are such individuals the kind of irresponsible or dangerous persons who Congress sought to prohibit from possessing firearms under [the law].”
