Now, to be fair, Trump's second tenure in the White House is currently measured in days, not weeks, and he's been extremely busy during that time. He's taking that whole "first 100 days" thing to heart and seemingly trying to reshape America in his first few months back.

A lot of people are thrilled with what he's accomplished so far.

However, there's one thing gun owners wanted that we haven't seen just yet.

Gun-rights advocates celebrating the end of the ATF’s “zero tolerance” policy toward licensed gun dealers are acting prematurely.

That’s according to the trade association that represents America’s firearm dealers and manufacturers. The National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) said that despite media reports to the contrary, the ATF’s strict enforcement toward federally licensed gun stores is still very much alive and in force.

“NSSF has spoken with ATF and the policy has not been repealed,” Mark Oliva, the group’s managing director for public affairs, told The Reload.

The confusion over the policy’s fate stems from an August 2024 internal ATF memo unearthed earlier this month during the course of a lawsuit gun-rights advocates filed against the agency. The memo appeared to have softened the agency’s threshold for revoking federal licenses by adding new language specifying what behavior qualifies as a “willful” violation that should trigger revocation.

“For purposes of the regulatory provisions of the GCA, the terms ‘willful’ and ‘willfulness’ mean a purposeful disregard of, a plain indifference to, or a reckless disregard of a known legal obligation,” the memo reads. “Willfulness requires fact specific application of law.”

It also added language stating that a single, inadvertent error in failing to complete forms may not amount to a “willful” violation on the part a licensed dealer, even if the dealer should have known his legal obligation for accurate paperwork.

While those additions speak to many of the types of violations gun-rights advocates have said resulted in a spike in unfair revocations, the memo notably retains its “zero tolerance” language. Oliva said the agency’s behavior has not changed in practice.

“That letter didn’t rescind the policy,” Oliva said. “Since then, we are aware that federal firearms licensee (FFL) inspections have continued and have not seen any indication, nor report of, any substantive change regarding how those inspections should be conducted or what the ATF has defined as a ‘willful’ violation under this ‘zero tolerance’ policy.”

In other words, it looks like the ATF changed the language in such a way that it would appear that they've ended to controversial policy that amounted to an all-out assault on lawful gun dealers, only they haven't in practice.

See, part of the problem is that a paperwork error is usually uncovered well after the fact. It's not easy to ascertain what exactly happened beyond what can be seen on the paperwork.

Note the language defining what a "willful" violation is, though. Terms like "plain indifference" and "reckless disregard" are nebulous enough that one might argue that failure to double or triple-check the paperwork counts as indifference, thus permitting the continuation of the previous policy while seemingly softening their stance.

However, one thing I think it did manage to do is actually protect the zero-tolerance policy.

What I mean is that now the way the policy reads, it seems reasonable. There's zero tolerance for people who are doing things wrong, but simple mistakes won't be penalized the same way, and we should all want to crack down on so-called rogue gun dealers, right?

In practice, they're just pretending that simple mistakes are the result of plain indifference or something else permitted under the policy, penalize the dealer just as they would have before, and keep on going. 

When the media reports on the story, though, they'll quote the ATF's policy and simply chalk the revocation or whatever other penalty is in place as the result of some reckless disregard for what the dealer knew they were supposed to be doing in the first place.

That means Trump--or whoever he picks as ATF director--needs to step in and put an end to this nonsense once and for all.