ATF Director Robert Cekada has done something federal firearms regulators rarely do: he has explained, in public, why deregulation and the rule of law are the same project. In an op-ed published in The Hill, Cekada defended the ATF’s sweeping 2026 regulatory reform package against critics who claim the agency is abandoning public safety. He is not. He is bringing the ATF into line with where the Supreme Court has been heading for two years, and I welcome it.
The Supreme Court’s Dangerousness Framework
Start with the doctrine, because it explains everything else. In United States v. Rahimi, 602 U.S. 680 (2024), the Court held 8-1, in an opinion by Chief Justice Roberts, that a person found by a court to pose a credible threat of physical violence to another may be temporarily disarmed under 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(8). Zackey Rahimi had dragged his girlfriend’s head against a dashboard and fired at a witness; he admitted the danger he posed. That was a judicial finding of physical dangerousness, and the Second Amendment tolerates disarmament on that basis.
Two years later, the Court closed the other end of the argument. In United States v. Hemani, 608 U.S. ___ (2026), decided 9-0 in an opinion by Justice Gorsuch, the Court held that prosecuting a regular marijuana user under 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(3) — with no individualized finding of dangerousness — cannot stand. Ali Hemani’s habit made him a lawbreaker under federal drug law, but it did not make him dangerous, and the Second Amendment requires more than a status label before it will tolerate disarmament.
Read together, Rahimi and Hemani draw a clean line: the government may disarm those who misuse firearms or who are judicially adjudicated to be a physical danger to themselves or others. It may not disarm people merely because they fall into an administrative category. That is the constitutional principle Director Cekada is now implementing.
Ending the Hobbyist Dragnet
The first reform repeals the 2024 “Engaged in the Business” rule, which threatened to sweep ordinary hobbyists who occasionally trade firearms into the federal licensing regime — with felony exposure for anyone who guessed wrong about where the line sat. The ATF is restoring the narrower statutory definition Congress actually enacted in the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act. A collector trading one rifle for another because he likes rifles is not “engaged in the business” of dealing firearms, and he should not need a license, or a lawyer, to find that out.
The Mental-Defective Fix: 200,000 Veterans
The second reform is the one drawing the loudest — and least accurate — criticism. Cekada’s op-ed traces the problem to its source:
“When Congress passed the Gun Control Act of 1968, the law affected a narrow category describing people with severe, permanent intellectual disabilities… Despite the narrowing intent, the definition was broadened in the 1990s. For instance, the Department of Veterans Affairs appointed a fiduciary to help a veteran manage benefit payments… That veteran was to be disarmed even absent any other functional impairment. Over 200,000 veterans lost their firearm rights this way.”
That broadening traces to a 1997 ATF interpretation, under the Clinton administration, treating a VA fiduciary appointment as equivalent to an adjudication of mental defectiveness under § 922(g)(4). Cekada identifies a parallel problem at the Social Security Administration, where beneficiaries who needed nothing more than help managing their paperwork faced the same disqualification. Needing an accountant is not the same as being adjudicated dangerous. This reform restores rights to roughly 200,000 veterans — without touching § 922(g)(4)‘s actual application to people who have been committed or judicially found dangerous, which Rahimi and Hemani leave fully intact.
From Zero Tolerance to Fighting Violent Crime
The third change replaces the 2021 Zero Tolerance enforcement policy, under which the ATF revoked federal firearms licenses over minor clerical errors, with a framework aimed at what actually matters. Cekada put it plainly: the old policy meant “shutting down legitimate firearms businesses for minor clerical infractions,” and the fix will “allow ATF to focus attention where it belongs: fighting violent crime.”
That distinction — between malum in se offenses, wrongs that are inherently evil, and malum prohibitum offenses, wrongs that exist only because a regulation says so — has always mattered to how I think about gun policy. History bears it out: the ATF’s worst institutional failures, from Ruby Ridge to Waco, trace back to enforcement of victimless, paperwork-driven violations, not to stopping armed violence. An agency laser-focused on violent criminals, cartel members, and the dangerously mentally ill, and out of the business of policing hobbyists and paperwork, is both better constitutional law and better public safety policy. Robert Cekada has the doctrine 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.