Three major Biden-era ATF rules are heading to the trash bin — and the gun-owning community should take notice. Under a landmark 34-rule reform package published in the Federal Register on May 6, 2026, the ATF under newly confirmed Director Robert Cekada and Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche is formally rescinding the pistol brace factoring rule (ATF Final Rule 2021R-08F, 88 Fed. Reg. 6478), issuing an interim final rule to repeal the “engaged in the business” rule (ATF Final Rule 2022R-17F, 89 Fed. Reg. 28968), and revising the regulatory machine gun definition to align with Garland v. Cargill, 602 U.S. 406 (2024). This is what regulatory rollback looks like when personnel and policy finally move in the same direction.
Personnel Is Policy — and These Are the Right People
The personnel picture matters here. Cekada, a career ATF special agent since 2005 who had been serving as Deputy Director, was confirmed by the Senate 59–39 on April 29, 2026, and sworn in the very next day. His first act in office was signing this reform package.
Acting AG Todd Blanche oversees the DOJ’s overall direction. Within the Civil Rights Division, Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon leads the division housing the Second Amendment Section, with Barry K. Arrington — formerly Chief Legal Counsel of Rocky Mountain Gun Owners — serving as Acting Section Chief. That team represents a fundamental reorientation of federal gun-law enforcement.
The ATF’s own language describes the shift as a “new era of reform” ensuring that agency actions are “grounded in clear statutory authority.” For years, the ATF operated as though it could write law by regulatory fiat. The current leadership is explicitly rejecting that model, and that is exactly what the Second Amendment community has been demanding.
The Pistol Brace Rule Is Dead
The stabilizing brace rule was one of Biden’s most aggressive power grabs against law-abiding gun owners. ATF Final Rule 2021R-08F, published at 88 Fed. Reg. 6478 on January 31, 2023, reclassified millions of braced pistols as short-barreled rifles under the National Firearms Act, 26 U.S.C. Chapter 53 — overnight requiring registration, a $200 tax stamp, and ATF approval from gun owners who had purchased perfectly legal products from manufacturers like SIG Sauer and Springfield Armory.
The rule lost in court repeatedly. The Fifth Circuit enjoined it in Mock v. Garland (later Mock v. Bondi), finding the ATF had acted in a manner “legislative in character” — i.e., beyond its statutory authority. DOJ eventually dropped its appeal. Now the ATF is formally proposing to rescind the rule entirely via FR Doc. 2026-08930, restoring pre-2023 definitions aligned with the statute. Public comment runs through August 4, 2026.
My general rule here: if a stabilizing brace walks like a brace, looks like a brace, and is sold as a brace by a reputable manufacturer with no enforcement history, it almost certainly is a brace. Anyone with a specific compliance question should consult an attorney with direct ATF experience.
”Engaged in the Business” — Protecting the Hobbyist
Biden’s “engaged in the business” rule (ATF Final Rule 2022R-17F, 89 Fed. Reg. 28968, effective May 20, 2024) sought to sweep casual private sellers into the mandatory Federal Firearms Licensee regime. The 65-year-old who buys and sells a handful of guns at weekend shows? Biden’s ATF wanted to treat him as a commercial dealer. The rule built on a statutory hook provided by the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act (Pub. L. 117-159, June 25, 2022) — negotiated in part by Sen. John Cornyn — which expanded the “engaged in the business” definition in 18 U.S.C. § 921(a)(21). Then the Biden ATF stretched the regulatory language even further. At least one federal court struck it down by October 2025.
The ATF’s Interim Final Rule now formally rescinds it. The new posture: if you are a genuine hobbyist occasionally trading guns from your personal collection, you are not “engaged in the business.” The Trump administration is applying the statute as written rather than using enforcement as a backdoor gun-registration program.
That does not mean limits disappear. Buying twenty of the same handgun and flipping them in weeks may legitimately look like commercial activity. But lawful hobbyists will get the benefit of the doubt — which is how it is supposed to work.
Following Cargill on Machine Guns
The machine gun piece is the cleanest fix legally. FR Doc. 2026-08926, effective May 6, 2026, removes the two sentences the ATF inserted into its regulatory machine gun definition in 2018 to capture bump-stock devices. The Supreme Court struck those additions down in Garland v. Cargill, 602 U.S. 406 (2024), where Justice Clarence Thomas, writing for a 6–3 majority joined by Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett, held that bump stocks do not convert semiautomatic rifles into “machineguns” under 26 U.S.C. § 5845(b). Michael Cargill and the legal team that carried that case from Texas all the way to Washington deserve enormous credit.
I want to offer historical context. The 2018 bump stock rule — though ultimately illegal, as Cargill confirmed — was adopted after the October 2017 Las Vegas shooting in a specific political environment: Cornyn-type Republicans in the Senate were openly negotiating with Democrats over a statutory redefinition of “machine gun” that could have been written broadly enough to sweep in semiautomatic rifles. The regulatory path stopped that momentum in Congress. It was still illegal. But the context matters. Now the ATF is simply returning to what Congress wrote in 1986, confirmed by the Court in 2024. Whatever the statute says — no more, no less.
The Trend Is Our Friend
This is not perfect. The brace rescission is still a proposed rule — comment period runs through August, and a final rule must follow. Hobbyists still need to exercise judgment about the private-sale line. And the ATF’s approach to private classification letters remains a genuinely double-edged sword: a favorable letter helps the whole community; an unfavorable one can be weaponized against it. Experienced ATF counsel should guide any decision about seeking advance classification.
But the direction is unmistakably correct. Lawful gun owners deserve a federal agency that is not inventing pretexts to criminalize them, and violent criminals deserve one that prosecutes without mercy. Under Cekada, Dhillon, Arrington, and Blanche, that is exactly the mission. The trend is our friend.
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.