{"id":223,"date":"2026-06-02T10:12:09","date_gmt":"2026-06-02T10:12:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/relocationacrossamerica.com\/?p=223"},"modified":"2026-06-02T10:12:09","modified_gmt":"2026-06-02T10:12:09","slug":"how-trump-reversed-bidens-crackdown-on-gun-trafficking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/relocationacrossamerica.com\/?p=223","title":{"rendered":"How Trump reversed Biden\u2019s crackdown on gun trafficking"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Marianna Mitchem grew up in the Denver suburbs, where she played high school soccer. One day in April 1999, her team faced off against a nearby rival, Columbine High. The next day, two teenagers went on a shooting rampage at Columbine, killing more than a dozen people.<\/p>\n

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The massacre left an imprint on Mitchem. After graduating from Providence College, she joined the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. \u201cFearing for my friends and watching what was happening \u2014 you don\u2019t forget things like that,\u201d she told me. \u201cI wanted to make a difference.\u201d<\/p>\n

She started in the ATF\u2019s Denver office as an industry operations investigator, the bureau\u2019s term for inspectors who ensure that firearms dealers are conducting the required background checks on buyers and maintaining sales records. When the bureau found discrepancies, it tended to settle for reprimands and improvement plans, rarely going so far as to revoke a dealer\u2019s license.<\/p>\n

In 2021, things started to change. The country was experiencing a surge of deadly violence, with homicides up more than a third since 2019, and the administration of President Joe Biden was desperate to reverse the trend. For years, data had shown that a large share of guns used in shootings came from a small fraction of dealers, and that guns that were trafficked \u2014 sold by stores to straw purchasers (people other than the intended users) or resold on the street \u2014 were far more likely to be used in shootings.<\/p>\n

Acting on this data, the administration in June 2021 announced what became known as \u201czero tolerance\u201d: Dealers found to be willfully violating the law would lose their licenses, period. Revocations spiked, from fewer than 50 in 2019, 2020 and 2021 to a record 181 in 2023.<\/p>\n

Also in 2021, Biden\u2019s attorney general, Merrick Garland, started urging federal prosecutors to prioritize gun violence. A year later, Congress passed a law that added a firearms trafficking conspiracy charge to the federal criminal code, a crucial new tool for prosecutors.<\/p>\n

After 2021, the homicide rate started falling, which criminologists attributed to several factors, including repair of the social fabric since the coronavirus pandemic and a closing of the breach in police-community relations that followed the 2020 murder of George Floyd. One other factor got less attention: the clampdown on the illegal flow of firearms.<\/p>\n

The Biden administration struggled to broadcast its gains on public safety, and Donald Trump won the election in 2024 partly by vowing to restore order. By the time Trump reentered the White House, Mitchem had risen to associate assistant director for industry operations, overseeing inspectors across the country. \u201cWe were making incredible progress on trafficking, on violent crime,\u201d she said late last year.<\/p>\n

But the Trump administration, driven both by gun-lobby advocacy and its own political priorities, quickly set about undoing much of its predecessor\u2019s moves to combat gun violence. It repealed the zero-tolerance policy, going so far as to invite revoked dealers to reapply for new licenses. It shifted hundreds of ATF agents to immigration work. And it scaled back on prosecutions for gun trafficking. The White House declined to comment, referring questions to the ATF and the Department of Justice.<\/p>\n

The homicide rate fell further last year, but criminologists warn against complacency, because the illicit gun trade is a classic pipeline problem: The harm can take a while to make itself felt. Research has found that the typical \u201ctime to crime\u201d for trafficked firearms ranges up to about three years, which means that any positive lag of the anti-trafficking efforts of the Biden years would still be in effect now, with any negative effects of the Trump pullback lying in the years to come.<\/p>\n

Among those now sounding the alarm is Mitchem. Dismayed at the policy reversal, she left the ATF last spring, after 21 years, and joined Everytown, the gun-safety group founded by Michael Bloomberg.<\/p>\n

\u201cJust because no one is watching the trafficking pipelines right now doesn\u2019t mean guns aren\u2019t flowing through it. It just means they\u2019re not being intercepted,\u201d she told me.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd as you walk away from that, and you don\u2019t have your focus on that anymore,\u201d she added, \u201cthat pipeline is going to be flowing, and we are going to start to see the violent crime impact from that over time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Estimates put the number of guns in the United States at close to 400 million, but the odds that any of them will be put to ill use rise exponentially if they are obtained illegally. Of the 2.3 million firearms traced from crime scenes between 2017 and 2023, half were bought less than three years earlier and 87% were recovered in possession of someone other than the original, legally authorized buyer. Over that period, stores sold almost 1.3 million guns to traffickers that were subsequently recovered in a crime, according to an Everytown analysis of ATF statistics.<\/p>\n

This is why the laws governing gun sales carry such high stakes for public safety. But enforcement of these laws has long occupied an unusual no-man\u2019s-land in this country, scrambling the standard political lines around criminal justice. Conservatives favoring tough-on-crime rhetoric are frequently torn when it comes to firearms trafficking: On the one hand, traffickers are helping fuel the violent crime that conservatives decry; on the other, prosecution of gun laws brushes against tenets that conservatives hold sacrosanct. It is liberals who are more likely to push for tougher enforcement, though they can be conflicted, too, as their belief in stricter gun laws runs up against a general preference for a less punitive approach to lawbreaking.<\/p>\n

Marooned in this no-man\u2019s-land for decades now has been the agency assigned the task of enforcing federal gun laws, the ATF. Going back to an episode at Ruby Ridge, Idaho, in 1992, where an ATF investigation of illegal gun dealing led to federal agents killing the wife and son of a white separatist, the ATF has been viewed with scorn by people who otherwise might side with armed government authorities. \u201cATF IS GAY\u201d read the T-shirt worn by one attendee of a big gun show I attended earlier this year in Manassas, Virginia.<\/p>\n

The agency\u2019s radioactivity with the gun-rights lobby has left it on shaky political ground. It went seven years without a Senate-confirmed director. Its budget has not enjoyed the same expansion as that of other federal law enforcement agencies. And stringent laws constrain any ATF capabilities viewed as potentially threatening the rights of gun owners. To comply with a 1986 law preventing the creation of a federal gun registry, for example, the ATF uses software with some features disabled. Steve Dettelbach, who served as director under Biden, joked in a 2024 congressional hearing that the ATF might be \u201cthe only customer of Adobe Acrobat that pays money to remove search function.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite these constraints, the ATF has developed its investigative capability. In the 1990s, the agency started sharing with local law enforcement agencies its National Integrated Ballistic Information Network, which collects the unique marks on bullet casings found at shooting scenes. The system has become much more potent as it became easier to share large numbers of images from crime scenes rapidly and compare them against the NIBIN database. The work was boosted further by the creation, starting in 2016, of 25 crime gun intelligence centers to process the data.<\/p>\n

Given that a tiny share of the nation\u2019s guns are used in shootings, with many of those used multiple times, the leads produced by the technology can have an outsized impact, said Daryl McCormick, who retired last year as special agent in charge of Ohio and southern Indiana. \u201cIt\u2019s crazy how it might spiderweb out,\u201d he told me, \u201cbecause you have a gun that\u2019s used in three shootings, but in one of those three shootings, there\u2019s a guy that\u2019s linked to three more shootings.\u201d<\/p>\n

Starting in the spring of 2020, that technology was put to the test. As homicides rose sharply, so did sales at dealerships. By one estimate, there were 3 million more guns sold between that March and July than would have been expected. Many soon turned up in shootings; the number of guns recovered at crime scenes that had been bought from a dealership less than a year earlier, an especially strong indicator of firearms trafficking, jumped by nearly a third from 2019 to 2021.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, many shootings involved ghost guns assembled from kits, which had begun proliferating a few years prior. Amid other factors driving the killing, the sheer plenitude of weaponry on the streets was pivotal, said Daniel Webster, a gun-violence researcher at Johns Hopkins University. \u201cWe know,\u201d he told me, \u201cthat a small number of dealers can create a substantial amount of harm, and traffickers as well.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the spring of 2021, a 25-year-old man was summoned to help a friend in a confrontation at a low-income housing development in Middletown, Connecticut. It was a petty beef arising from disrespectful comments made to someone\u2019s girlfriend, but Tylon Hardy responded anyway. \u201cHe was one of the guys who wanted to protect his community,\u201d his sister, Tianna Hardy, told me later. \u201cHe showed up to protect his friend.\u201d After he arrived, Tylon was fatally shot in the back.<\/p>\n

Guns are tightly regulated in Connecticut, where buyers must first obtain a permit. But this gun had not been sold by a Connecticut store. It had been purchased six days earlier at Smokin\u2019 Barrel Guns and Ammo in Raleigh, North Carolina, more than 600 miles away.<\/p>\n

It was a particularly rapid movement up the Iron Pipeline, the name for the trafficking channel from southern states with lax gun laws to northern states with stricter ones. And it turned into a clear example of why trafficking enforcement matters. Investigators obtained camera footage from the shop showing a young man emerging after buying the gun, a Taurus 9 mm pistol, to make a call on his cellphone.<\/p>\n

The following spring, the Biden-nominated U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of North Carolina, Michael Easley Jr., produced indictments in the case that started with the camera: Four people were charged with having engaged in a conspiracy to traffic dozens of guns from shops in eastern and central North Carolina. All told, the ringleader had bought more than 100 guns from straw purchasers in North Carolina; 10 of the guns surfaced at crime scenes in Connecticut and New Jersey. The ringleader ended up pleading guilty and being sentenced to more than 10 years in prison; the other three received sentences ranging from 18 months to five years.<\/p>\n

Easley kept pursuing trafficking cases, poring over spreadsheets full of NIBIN data showing information for every gun traced from shootings in his district. His office would zero in on guns with a short \u201ctime to crime\u201d from the initial sale and see if investigators could build leads from purchase records. His team made its interest in trafficking plain to the local ATF division, motivating agents to build cases. \u201cProsecutors have the ability to send a demand signal to the marketplace of agents, that we have an interest in these and if you bring us the cases, we will push them over the end zone and get convictions,\u201d he told me.<\/p>\n

Prosecutors kept getting more encouragement from Washington. In April 2022, the ATF issued a rule decreeing that ghost guns had to conform to the same regulations as regular firearms, including carrying serial numbers and requiring background checks.<\/p>\n

Two months later, Biden signed the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, which got crucial Republican backing from North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis. In addition to the new trafficking conspiracy charge, the law included a new straw-purchasing charge, expanded background checks for buyers under 21 and funding for states with red-flag laws permitting gun confiscations from those judged dangerous. And a month after that, the Senate confirmed Dettelbach, giving the ATF its first confirmed director since 2015, one who had prosecuted gun crimes as U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Ohio.<\/p>\n

Across the country, federal prosecutors took on trafficking cases with gusto. Over the remainder of Biden\u2019s term, they charged more than 500 defendants using the new trafficking statutes; others brought cases using laws already on the books.<\/p>\n

In Ohio, McCormick and his ATF colleagues took on a sprawling case that started with a shooting with a machine gun in Avondale, outside Cincinnati, and led to a six-year prison sentence for a 24-year-old man who had made and sold over 80 machine-gun conversion devices; two other men who trafficked the devices to Cincinnati gangs were sentenced to nine and 11 years. As in North Carolina, the Ohio agents were getting encouragement from prosecutors, including Kenneth Parker, the then-U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Ohio. \u201cI made it clear, through my edicts, my announcements to them that we wanted those cases involving violence, that they know how seriously we were taking them,\u201d he told me.<\/p>\n

In February, I drove to Raleigh to meet with Easley and visit Smokin\u2019 Barrel \u2014 or what used to be Smokin\u2019 Barrel. The shop closed after the ATF revoked its license in early 2023, not for having sold the gun in the Connecticut case, but for an earlier incident, in which the owner sold a gun to an 18-year-old woman, in violation of North Carolina\u2019s 21-year age minimum for buying a handgun. The shop, a small outbuilding adjacent to a used car lot, now sat empty; its fading sign still stood roadside.<\/p>\n

Not far away, I found the former owner, Richard Humphries, at his home. He told me how upset he still was over the revocation, especially since, he said, he had self-reported the improper sale.<\/p>\n

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When I asked him about the Taurus that ended up being used six days later in the Connecticut killing, he initially had trouble recalling it, confusing it with another case in which a man had used a gun bought at the store to kill his wife. What was it like to learn about shootings with the guns he sold? \u201cI hate it,\u201d he said. \u201cI hate that I sold it and he might have used it, but there\u2019s nothing I can, you know \u2026\u201d He trailed off.<\/p>\n

I pointed out that in the Connecticut case, investigators had been able to uncover the trafficking ring after tracing the gun to his shop. Was that a good use of resources? \u201cYeah,\u201d he said. \u201cI mean, they need to be able to do that. But they just, you know, they need to pay more attention to the crooks than people trying to make an honest living.\u201d<\/p>\n

I heard similar complaints from other dealers who had their licenses revoked during Biden\u2019s term for transgressions they insisted were mere clerical mistakes. One in Indiana told me that his violations included a mix-up involving an Amish customer\u2019s name; one in South Carolina told me his violations included filling out forms on behalf of elderly customers with shaky handwriting. \u201cIf it had been six months earlier, they would have given us a slap on the hand,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Even some within the ATF had misgivings, worrying that the policy would strain the agency\u2019s relations with law-abiding dealers and make them less likely to offer alerts on suspicious behavior by buyers. \u201cThe industry is probably one of the best ways we get information about trafficking,\u201d McCormick, the retired Ohio agent, told me. \u201cBut if there\u2019s friction between us and the industry, they\u2019re less likely to report it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gun-safety advocates discounted that risk, saying the policy had both shut down many lawless stores and encouraged countless other sellers to make sure they were complying with the law. \u201cIt\u2019s not only targeting bad dealers but sending a message to the entire industry: button up,\u201d Josh Scharff, general counsel of Brady United, told me.<\/p>\n

In 2024, revocations rose yet further, to 183. This represented a mere sliver of dealers \u2014 only 2% of those inspected that year \u2014 but it provoked new ire, not only from traditional lobby groups such as the National Shooting Sports Foundation and National Rifle Association but from ascendant groups of gun owners with even more aggressively anti-regulation stances.<\/p>\n

Some dealers challenged their revocations in federal court. In 2023, the ATF revoked the license of a shop in the Phoenix suburbs, Chambered Group, after four inspections in five years turned up a host of violations. The business sought unsuccessfully to block the revocation in court, with a federal judge, Steven Logan, finding that the business had \u201cpurposefully disregarded [federal] regulations by repeatedly violating the same regulations despite being given multiple opportunities to cure its mistakes.\u201d In 2024, one of the shop\u2019s co-owners tried to get a new license under a slightly different name, Chambered Custom Firearms, and the ATF blocked him, noting his past role with the revoked store. (A lawyer for the shop declined to comment.)<\/p>\n

But after Trump returned to the White House, his administration announced an end to the zero-tolerance policy, urged revoked dealers to reapply and started settling the court cases, one after another. In April 2025, the DOJ informed the court that it had started settlement talks in the Arizona case and a month later alerted it that Chambered Custom had submitted a new application \u201cwhich ATF will expeditiously process.\u201d It issued the license in July.<\/p>\n

In Oregon, a dealer had gone to federal court to challenge the ATF\u2019s 2024 denial of his license renewal for South Valley Firearms in the town of Monroe due to his past conviction for domestic violence. Trump\u2019s DOJ initially contested the dealer\u2019s bid, but early this year, the department notified his attorney out of the blue that his client would be getting his license, after all. \u201cThey didn\u2019t give any explanation as to why,\u201d said the lawyer, Leonard Williamson. \u201cThey just said, \u2018Have him resubmit his application and we\u2019ll give it to him.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

The end of zero-tolerance was, on its own, hardly a surprise for an administration elected with the strong support of gun-rights and gun-industry groups. What has differed from the first Trump term has been the wholesale shift of resources away from the enforcement of gun trafficking laws and toward the immigration crackdown, both at the ATF and DOJ.<\/p>\n

Last spring, the administration began shifting large numbers of ATF agents to a new assignment: assisting with Immigration and Customs Enforcement actions against undocumented immigrants. ICE records obtained by the libertarian Cato Institute in September showed that nearly 1,800 of ATF\u2019s roughly 2,500 agents had taken part in enforcement and removal operations.<\/p>\n

While ATF agents were shifted to immigration operations, criminal referrals fell. ATF referrals for common trafficking-related charges, including the two added in the 2022 law, decreased 15% in 2025 from 2024, according to a ProPublica analysis. Asked about the drop, ATF spokesperson Tanya Roman pointed at DOJ prosecutors. \u201cNot every ATF referral is accepted by the [United States Attorney\u2019s Office] for prosecution,\u201d she said in a written response to questions.<\/p>\n

Eventually, the shift toward immigration enforcement reached even beyond ATF\u2019s agents to the industry operations investigators who inspect dealers. Terrence Robinson had served in that role for six years, based in Baltimore. He took pride in the work, but soon after Trump\u2019s second term began, Robinson realized it would be a turbulent year for his agency. As part of the push by Elon Musk\u2019s Department of Government Efficiency to shrink the government, the ATF offered early retirement to many of its 800-odd inspectors. In the end, some 125 took the offer, threatening to overburden a corps already struggling to inspect even a sliver of the nation\u2019s 130,000 licensed firearms dealers. \u201cATF does not comment on personnel matters,\u201d Roman said.<\/p>\n

Around the same time, Robinson went to inspect the location of an applicant for a dealership license in Baltimore. The city, long wracked by gun violence, has come to have virtually no licensed dealers within its boundaries; those that remain are mostly in the suburbs. Robinson was startled to discover that this applicant intended to sell guns from his apartment in a building downtown, a few blocks from Camden Yards. Robinson voiced his concerns to his supervisor, who told him that he had to approve it. \u201cAccording to our rules and regulations now, he passed a criminal background check, and he\u2019s a citizen, so \u2026,\u201d Robinson said. \u201cIt\u2019s mind-boggling.\u201d<\/p>\n

Most upsetting, though, was the directive that he and other industry operations investigators received in late summer to start spending at least six hours per week on immigration-related work. It was hard to understand what this even meant \u2014 their job was to inspect firearms dealers. To comply, he began scouring dealers\u2019 sales records looking for buyers with foreign-sounding names, which were then relayed to the Department of Homeland Security. This struck him as a monumental misuse of resources.<\/p>\n

This was what pushed him over the edge and made him decide to take early retirement, too, in September. \u201cI didn\u2019t sign up to be an immigration person,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m just not that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Asked about such orders, the ATF\u2019s Roman said: \u201cIn support of President Trump\u2019s whole of government approach to combat illegal immigration, ATF is assisting the Department of Homeland Security and other federal law enforcement partners with their immigration enforcement efforts. To ensure operational security and the safety of our agents and partners, ATF does not disclose details or specific numbers of personnel deployments or enforcement activities.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now that Robinson was gone, his former team was down from 10 to six, with a temporary supervisor. He worried what the changes at ATF meant for public safety. \u201cI\u2019m not saying I can see the future, but I don\u2019t see things getting better,\u201d he said. \u201cI see things getting worse.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cEveryone\u2019s been in a little bit of shock about what\u2019s going on,\u201d Marianna Mitchem said last December, speaking from the stage of a conference on gun violence at the Center for American Progress, the center-left think tank in Washington. She described what the ATF had accomplished in recent years, then she laid bare the extent of the pullback now underway.<\/p>\n

Mitchem told the advocates that they would have to look to officials in their home states and cities to try to fill the void left by the Trump administration. \u201cIt\u2019s up to the states to start tackling this trafficking problem, because unfortunately, you\u2019re not going to have the support of the ATF,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

This has already started happening in a few places. In the suburbs of Philadelphia, a city that suffered one of the worst pandemic-era homicide spikes but has since experienced dramatic improvement, county sheriffs have started doing more inspections of dealers to make up for the decline in ATF enforcement. A member of the conference audience asked Mitchem what else states could be doing to respond. Her answer suggested she wasn\u2019t sure.<\/p>\n

\u201cATF wasn\u2019t always the most widely known agency. I think we sort of liked it that way. We did really, really good work and kept our head down,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd so now, you\u2019re trying to let everybody know, unfortunately, there are still good people there, but they\u2019ve been redirected.\u201d<\/p>\n

In February, Trump\u2019s nominee to lead the agency, Robert Cekada, downplayed that redirection at his confirmation hearing. Cekada is a 20-year ATF veteran, a fact in which gun-safety advocates have tried to take some reassurance. Cekada testified that the agency was continuing to \u201cdo dealer inspections uninhibited.\u201d<\/p>\n

But ATF has made it much harder for researchers and the public to track that work. It took the administration more than 15 months to release a tally of how many dealer licenses it had revoked: 56 in 2025, down 69% from the year before. Cekada also challenged a report last fall that 80% of the ATF\u2019s agents had been reassigned to immigration enforcement. The reassignment had never amounted to more than 100 agents at a given time, Cekada said. \u201cATF in those operations has been focused on offenders that were illegally armed with firearms,\u201d he told senators.<\/p>\n

But as the former federal prosecutors and ATF agents I spoke with noted, the key question when it comes to the fight against trafficking is whether prosecutors are seeking out cases. After all, the ATF investigates cases, but U.S. attorneys prosecute them. And here the evidence suggests a pullback. A ProPublica analysis shows that in the first year of the Trump administration, the DOJ declined 30% more referrals from the ATF for the main trafficking-related charges than it had the year prior.<\/p>\n

Despite the high rate of declinations for ATF referrals, the DOJ last year ended up prosecuting nearly as many gun-trafficking cases from all sources as it had in 2024. But a growing share of the cases, roughly 30%, were under the new trafficking conspiracy charges included in the 2022 law, which since its inception has proven especially useful in cases involving gun trafficking across the Mexican border: About a fifth of all people charged under that law over the course of 2024 and 2025 are in a single district, western Texas. Asked about the rise in declinations of ATF referrals and the shift toward border-related cases, DOJ spokesperson Katie Kenlein said, \u201cThe department declines to comment on prosecutorial strategy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Webster, the Johns Hopkins researcher, said numbers leave little doubt as to the shift away from general anti-trafficking enforcement. \u201cEverything is diverted,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s all about immigrants.\u201d<\/p>\n

On April 29, right after being confirmed as ATF director, Cekada announced 34 proposed rule changes, including requiring dealers to hold records for only 20 or 30 years, not indefinitely, and limiting ATF scrutiny of the state-issued permits that can replace background checks for buyers. \u201cWe are proposing to remove unnecessary hurdles that were standing in the way of law-abiding citizens and businesses,\u201d he said, flanked by leaders of the NRA and National Shooting Sports Foundation.<\/p>\n

One crucial Biden-era reform has persisted: the clampdown on ghost guns. The 2022 ATF regulation survived a Supreme Court challenge last year, and lawsuits by several cities helped drive the leading producer of ghost guns out of business. Webster and other criminologists note that the reduced flow of ghost guns correlates with a sharply lower rate of shootings by teenagers, who had been heavy users of the guns during the 2020-21 homicide surge.<\/p>\n

Even that progress seemed as if it might be at risk. In early April, a joint status report issued to the federal court in Texas where the case originated stated that \u201cATF has advised that it plans to take agency action to amend the challenged rule\u201d (even though the rule has been upheld by the Supreme Court). A day later, the White House\u2019s 2027 budget called for reversing \u201cthe imposition of excessive restrictions on homemade firearms.\u201d But five days after that, the DOJ notified the court in the Texas case that \u201cthe government has decided to maintain the definition\u201d that underlies the ghost gun rule. Asked for clarification, the ATF\u2019s Roman said last week: \u201cATF is still conducting legal reviews for other, more technically challenging rules. If changes are needed following the review, a proposal will be published.\u201d For now, one key valve in the pipeline remains closed.<\/p>\n

Read more Right-wing Christians want to exclude people like me \u2014 I\u2019d rather reach out<\/a><\/p>\n<\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Gains made under Joe Biden’s administration have evaporated.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":222,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[394,5,395,396,214,237],"class_list":["post-223","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting","tag-atf","tag-donald-trump","tag-gun-trafficking","tag-gun-control","tag-joe-biden","tag-propublica"],"yoast_head":"\nHow Trump reversed Biden\u2019s crackdown on gun trafficking - Relocation Across America<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/relocationacrossamerica.com\/?p=223\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"How Trump reversed Biden\u2019s crackdown on gun trafficking - Relocation Across America\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Gains made under Joe Biden's administration have evaporated.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/relocationacrossamerica.com\/?p=223\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Relocation Across America\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2026-06-02T10:12:09+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"23 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/relocationacrossamerica.com\\\/?p=223#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/relocationacrossamerica.com\\\/?p=223\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"admin\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/relocationacrossamerica.com\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/ba2572fa1a7a241291fdc36bdae80fcf\"},\"headline\":\"How Trump reversed Biden\u2019s crackdown on gun trafficking\",\"datePublished\":\"2026-06-02T10:12:09+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/relocationacrossamerica.com\\\/?p=223\"},\"wordCount\":4535,\"commentCount\":0,\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/relocationacrossamerica.com\\\/?p=223#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/relocationacrossamerica.com\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2026\\\/06\\\/30c85ef92fb857ffed156851c51a2255.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"ATF\",\"Donald Trump\",\"Gun Trafficking\",\"Gun-control\",\"Joe Biden\",\"ProPublica\"],\"articleSection\":[\"Interesting\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/relocationacrossamerica.com\\\/?p=223#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/relocationacrossamerica.com\\\/?p=223\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/relocationacrossamerica.com\\\/?p=223\",\"name\":\"How Trump reversed Biden\u2019s crackdown on gun trafficking - Relocation Across America\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/relocationacrossamerica.com\\\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/relocationacrossamerica.com\\\/?p=223#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/relocationacrossamerica.com\\\/?p=223#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/relocationacrossamerica.com\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2026\\\/06\\\/30c85ef92fb857ffed156851c51a2255.jpg\",\"datePublished\":\"2026-06-02T10:12:09+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/relocationacrossamerica.com\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/ba2572fa1a7a241291fdc36bdae80fcf\"},\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/relocationacrossamerica.com\\\/?p=223#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/relocationacrossamerica.com\\\/?p=223\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/relocationacrossamerica.com\\\/?p=223#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/relocationacrossamerica.com\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2026\\\/06\\\/30c85ef92fb857ffed156851c51a2255.jpg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/relocationacrossamerica.com\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2026\\\/06\\\/30c85ef92fb857ffed156851c51a2255.jpg\",\"width\":1692,\"height\":1129,\"caption\":\"UNITED STATES - APRIL 6: President Donald Trump mimics firing a gun during a news conference in the White House briefing room about the war in Iran on Monday, April 6, 2026. 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