On April 29, DOJ held a press conference at headquarters that was a watershed moment for ATF policy. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, newly confirmed ATF Director Robert Cekada, and ATF Chief Counsel Robert Leider announced 34 regulatory actions — seven final rules and twenty-seven proposed rules — aimed at unwinding more than a decade of regulatory drift. I covered the political timing in my last piece. Today I want to walk through what was said at the podium.
Blanche’s Opening: The Second Amendment Is “Not Negotiable”
Todd Blanche set the tone. He did not hedge, he did not soften, and he did not pretend this was routine housekeeping:
“The Second Amendment will never be treated as a second-class right in the Trump administration. President Trump has been clear on this from day one. The Second Amendment is not negotiable. It is part of the foundation of this great country. And under his leadership, this administration, this Justice Department is acting on that belief.”
— Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche
That is a Justice Department position statement. For too many years the operative posture inside DOJ treated the Second Amendment as a tolerated nuisance to be worked around. Blanche put the opposite stake in the ground, with Cekada and Leider standing behind him.
Blanche connected the announcement to the executive order President Trump signed in February 2025 directing a federal review of regulations infringing the right to keep and bear arms. People ask why this took over a year. The honest answer: every rule has to be measured against the underlying statute, the APA, and current case law. Skip a step and an anti-gun district court vacates the rule — you have lost a year. So you do it carefully or you do it twice.
Cekada Takes the Podium: 21 Years at ATF, About to Sign 34 Rules
Blanche handed the floor to Robert Cekada, confirmed by the Senate just minutes earlier on a 59-39 vote. Cekada is not a political appointee parachuting into an agency he does not understand. He is a career federal law enforcement officer — over 21 years at ATF, with prior service at NYPD and Plantation, Florida PD. He is also, by Blanche’s account, a serious gun owner and “one heck of a shot.” That matters. An ATF director who actually shoots and understands the firearms industry from the inside will not be bamboozled into signing rules that look reasonable on paper and become traps in practice.
Cekada’s first act in office was to start signing. His own framing was striking:
“I’ve been with ATF for over 20 years. Have never seen a regulatory package of this scale. In fact, we are going to be signing just about as many rules as have been proposed during my entire 20 years with this agency.”
— ATF Director Robert Cekada
That is a remarkable admission from inside the agency. ATF is conceding that the regulatory state under the previous administration overshot, and the agency itself is doing the corrective work.
The Rule Highlights Cekada Walked Through
Cekada walked through the headline pieces. Four stood out:
Pistol brace rule rescission. The 2023 stabilizing brace rule has already been vacated or enjoined in multiple jurisdictions, including the Fifth Circuit’s decision in Mock v. Garland. Leaving a vacated rule sitting in the Code of Federal Regulations creates confusion. Formally rescinding it makes the books match what the courts have already done.
Engaged-in-the-business rule rescission. The 2024 rule expanded the statutory definition of who counts as “engaged in the business” of dealing firearms. ATF will rescind it and restore the definition Congress codified — “no more, no less,” in Cekada’s words. Agencies do not get to rewrite statutes through regulation.
Form 4473 modernization. ATF proposes to authorize electronic 4473s, autopopulation of fields, digital attachments, and minor revisions to shorten the form. Overdue.
Electronic A&D books. ATF proposes to let FFLs generate and store their acquisition-and-disposition records and 4473s electronically. This codifies a practice the industry has run under variance for years. Cekada noted, correctly, that electronic records also help legitimate law-enforcement trace requests move faster.
Leider as the Legal Architect
Blanche thanked ATF Chief Counsel Robert Leider, the legal scholar behind the package. Leider holds a JD from Yale, a PhD from Georgetown, clerked at the Supreme Court, and was on the faculty at Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason before coming to ATF. He has spent his career writing on the Second Amendment. I have been on Federalist Society panels with him, and I will say it plainly: he is the right lawyer for this job. Cekada announced Leider will lead stakeholder briefings over the coming weeks to walk industry, gun-rights groups, and the public through the technical detail before comments close.
Enforcement Posture and What Comes Next
Blanche pre-empted the predictable attack — that this package weakens public safety — by drawing a clean line:
“Nothing we are doing today weakens law enforcement… This administration, as it always has, remains fully committed to targeting those who break the law, gang members, repeat offenders, traffickers, and cartels.”
— Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche
This is the right enforcement posture, and it is the one I have been arguing for. Focus on the malum in se — actual violent crime — and stop treating ordinary law-abiding gun owners as malum prohibitum defendants over paperwork errors. Blanche even argued clearer rules will help enforcement: better compliance follows from better clarity, freeing ATF resources to chase the cartels and traffickers who deserve agency attention.
Blanche also previewed what is in the pipeline. ATF is studying which rifles qualify as “particularly suitable for sporting purposes” under the import statute. That review is import-export on its face, but it touches the AR-15 issue directly, and a sensible outcome will help on the broader question of whether semi-automatic rifles are constitutionally protected — a question I expect the Supreme Court to confront soon. I also expect movement on Section 925(c) restoration of rights, now processed out of DOJ.
This was the most consequential ATF press conference in a generation. Three officials, on camera, committing the federal firearms regulatory apparatus to take the Second Amendment seriously as written. The direction is finally right.
This article is based on analysis by Professor Mark W. Smith, constitutional attorney and Host of the Four Boxes Diner 2nd Amendment channel. Watch the original video here. This does not constitute legal advice.