Trump’s FY26 Budget Slashes ATF Funding, Defends 2nd Amendment from Bureaucratic Overreach

[Bitter Clinger]

https://www.ammoland.com/2025/05/trumps ... amendment/

For years, gun rights advocates have warned about the ATF’s regulatory mission creep—transforming unelected bureaucrats into de facto lawmakers. This budget takes direct aim at that abuse.

Under the Biden administration, the ATF aggressively expanded enforcement and interpretation of gun laws:

Attempting to implement near-universal background checks by redefining who is “engaged in the business” of selling firearms.
Criminalizing non-registration of pistol braces, disproportionately affecting disabled veterans who rely on them for stability.
Imposing draconian restrictions on homemade firearms and 80% receivers—essentially banning a practice that has been legal since the founding of the Republic.
Weaponizing revocations of Federal Firearms Licenses (FFLs), putting thousands of small gun shops and family-run businesses at risk.
Rather than empowering more anti-gun red tape, the Trump budget proposes a return to the ATF’s core law enforcement mission: stopping illegal firearms traffickers and assisting local law enforcement in tracing crime guns—particularly those used by gangs like MS-13. In short, it means going after the criminals, not the Constitution.

This move marks a rare and refreshing acknowledgment from the federal government: that gun owners are not the problem.

By shifting focus away from harassing hobbyists, veterans, and small businesses, and toward genuine public safety threats, the administration draws a hard line in defense of the Second Amendment—and the millions of law-abiding Americans who cherish it.

For the first time in years, the ATF may finally be told what gun owners have been saying all along: your job is to fight crime, not our rights.