WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Trump administration repealed the Biden-era 'zero tolerance' policy for firearms dealers in 2025 and scaled back enforcement actions by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF). The policy change allowed dealers whose licenses had been revoked to reapply for new licenses and shifted hundreds of ATF agents from gun enforcement duties to immigration work.

The 'zero tolerance' policy, announced by the Biden administration in June 2021, led to an increase in license revocations—from fewer than 50 annually between 2019 and 2021 to a record 181 in 2023—for dealers found willfully violating federal firearms laws. Under the Trump administration, prosecutions for gun trafficking were also scaled back.

Marianna Mitchem, who joined the ATF after the 1999 Columbine High School shooting and rose to associate assistant director for industry operations, left the agency in spring 2025 after 21 years of service. She joined Everytown, a gun-safety organization. In late 2025, Mitchem said: "We were making incredible progress on trafficking, on violent crime."

She warned that reduced oversight could have long-term consequences. "Just because no one is watching the trafficking pipelines right now doesn’t mean guns aren’t flowing through it. It just means they’re not being intercepted," Mitchem said.

Between 2017 and 2023, half of the 2.3 million firearms traced from crime scenes were purchased less than three years earlier, and 87% were recovered in the possession of someone other than the original buyer. An Everytown analysis of ATF statistics found that stores sold nearly 1.3 million guns to traffickers during that period that were later linked to crimes. Criminologists note that the effects of enforcement changes may take years to appear due to the 'pipeline problem' of illicit firearms circulating after initial sale.