US firearms examiners declared ‘essential’ shutdown workers after gun-lobby pressure
Americans able to buy deadly ‘gangster weapons’ again as lobbying forces key concession from Trump officials
US citizens are free once more to buy some of the country’s most deadly firearms and gun accessories, after relentless lobbying by the gun industry and Republican politicians forced a concession from the Trump administration under the federal government shutdown.
As of this week, gun owners will be able to restart purchases of some of the most highly regulated weapons in the US, with the return to work of federal employees responsible for regulating the items now reclassified as “essential”. They include silencers, short-barreled rifles and vintage machine-guns produced before 1986.
Sales of those items had ground to a halt under the shutdown after federal examiners charged with regulating the purchases were furloughed. The examiners formed part of the NFA division of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF).
The weapons have long been recognized as posing an outsized risk to public safety, ever since the National Firearms Act under which they are regulated was passed in 1934. Commonly known as “gangster weapons”, the firearms have proliferated in recent years and are now among the bestsellers in the gun market.
The temporary block of sales of these heavily controlled firearms provoked a fierce backlash from industry groups and members of Congress. While sales of semi-automatic rifles, shotguns and handguns have proceeded untouched by the government shutdown, and background checks have proceeded as normal, lobbyists argued that the impediment to sales of silencers, pre-1986 machine guns and short-barreled rifles was a violation of Americans’ second amendment rights.
“Your second amendment rights are not suspended because of Congress’s inability to pass legislation,” said Larry Keane, the general counsel for the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF), the gun industry’s trade group.
“We were hearing from our members about the impact,” he added. “Companies that sell suppressors were effectively shut down.”
On 16 October, the firearm industry trade association, the NSSF, wrote to the US attorney general, Pam Bondi, protesting that “a right delayed is a right denied”. It called for the immediate resumption of sales of what it called “safety-enhancing devices already widely accepted and responsibly used through the country”.
A day later, 30 Republican Congress members lobbied the acting director of the ATF, Daniel Driscoll. They said that the block on acquiring the firearms infringed upon “Americans’ ability to protect themselves, their loved ones, and their property”.
The Trump administration has bowed to such concerted pressure, allowing the firearms examiners to return to their desks on Monday. The concession means that sales of the silencers, short-barreled weapons and older machine guns will be allowed to restart, even while other critical public services continue to be ensnared by the shutdown.
Mothballed services include the approval of new medical drugs and the processing of small business loans. Even some federal employees who oversee the US nuclear stockpile remain on furlough.
“While the shutdown has paralyzed the work of federal agencies that actually protect American lives, the Trump administration has deemed processing applications for firearms and accessories that threaten public safety an essential activity,” Josh Sugarmann, executive director of the Violence Policy Center, told the Guardian.
The gun rights organization, Gun Owners of America, hailed the decision to allow sales of the deadly weapons to resume as an “historic win for gun owners against years of ATF tyranny”.
Other elements of the gun industry will continue to be affected by the shutdown. Applications for permits and licenses that would allow for international gun dealing and the classification of new products firearm and accessory makers want to bring to market are still not being processed.
