Acting AG Todd Blanche signed a five-rule ATF package this afternoon under EO 14206. Robert Cekada was confirmed as ATF Director the same hour. Here’s what changed for FFLs, prohibited persons, and rights restoration.
The post 5 ATF Rules Just Got the Axe: Inside the DOJ’s April 2026 Gun Regulation Package first appeared on Guns & Gadgets Daily.
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Image: U.S. Department of Justice (public domain — federal government work).
Updated April 29, 2026, by Chad Dyer
On Wednesday, April 29, 2026, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche signed a landmark package of proposed and final rules ending the DOJ and ATF’s 14-month review of every Biden-era firearms regulation — the same afternoon the Senate confirmed Robert Cekada as the new ATF Director on a 54–46 vote.
The April 29, 2026 DOJ/ATF regulatory package is a five-part rule release executed under Executive Order 14206 (“Protecting Second Amendment Rights”). It codifies the repeal of the Biden-era zero-tolerance dealer policy, stands up a new federal gun-rights restoration system, and narrows the legal definitions of “unlawful drug user” and “fugitive from justice” used to determine who is prohibited from owning a firearm. It is the largest single-day rollback of federal gun regulation in more than a decade.
Here is what each of the five pieces actually does, what it doesn’t do, and what comes next under Director Cekada.
What the DOJ announced today
The signing event at the Robert F. Kennedy Building was the formal end of the comprehensive review President Trump ordered in February 2025 with Executive Order 14206. That order directed the Attorney General to examine every order, regulation, guidance document, plan, and international agreement of every executive department for “ongoing infringements of the Second Amendment rights of our citizens.” Fourteen months later, the review produced the package signed today.
Five distinct regulatory actions were announced. Three are final rules taking effect in the Federal Register over the coming weeks. Two are notices of proposed rulemaking that open public comment periods of 30 to 60 days each. All five share a common theme: they shrink the federal footprint over law-abiding gun owners and dealers, while leaving in place the underlying statutes — the Gun Control Act and the National Firearms Act — that only Congress can amend.
Rule 1 — Zero-tolerance dealer policy is gone for good
The Biden administration’s “Enhanced Regulatory Enforcement Policy,” better known as the zero-tolerance policy, instructed ATF inspectors to revoke any FFL that committed any of five named violations — even a single paperwork error in some interpretations. License revocations climbed to record highs in fiscal years 2023 and 2024, with hundreds of small-shop dealers losing their livelihoods over administrative mistakes that posed no threat to public safety.
The policy was administratively rescinded in April 2025 under former AG Pamela Bondi. Today’s signing codifies that rescission as a final rule and replaces it with a new graduated enforcement framework that requires inspectors to weigh willfulness, materiality, and prior compliance history before recommending revocation. In plain terms: a one-time clerical error on a Form 4473 will no longer cost a dealer their FFL.
For the roughly 80,000 active Type 01 dealers in the United States, that’s the most significant compliance shift since the original 1998 inspection guidelines. Expect renewed FFL applications from former dealers who were forced to surrender licenses during the 2023–2024 crackdown.
Rule 2 — A new federal rights-restoration system, finally
Federal law has technically allowed people prohibited from owning firearms to apply for “relief from disability” under 18 U.S.C. § 925(c) since 1968. In practice, Congress has defunded ATF’s authority to process those applications since 1992, leaving the law on the books but the door locked.
The interim final rule issued in March 2025 transferred § 925(c) authority from ATF to the DOJ directly, sidestepping the funding ban. Today’s package finalizes that transfer and stands up the operational program: an online application portal, up to 50 full-time DOJ staff, a published fee schedule, and a case-by-case review process anticipated to handle up to one million applications per year once fully operational.
For the millions of Americans carrying decades-old non-violent felony records — the most common single category being financial-crime convictions from the 1990s and early 2000s — there is now, for the first time in 34 years, a working federal path to restoration. The process is individualized, with screening and statutory waiting periods built in, and violent felonies remain categorically excluded by statute — but the door is finally open. A right that has been on paper since 1968 and frozen since 1992 is, at last, operational.
The portal is expected to open in Q3 2026.
Rule 3 — “Unlawful drug user” gets a tighter definition
The Supreme Court’s pending decision in United States v. Hemani will resolve whether 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(3) — the federal prohibition on firearm possession by an “unlawful user of or addicted to any controlled substance” — is constitutional as applied to people who use drugs habitually but are not actively impaired when they possess a firearm.
Today’s notice of proposed rulemaking narrows ATF’s definition of “unlawful user” to require either (a) active impairment at the time of possession, (b) a conviction within the previous 12 months, or (c) clinical evidence of dependence within the previous 12 months. The current ATF interpretation, which can sweep in someone who tested positive for cannabis a year ago in a state where it is legal, is replaced by a temporal-proximity standard.
This is the package’s most legally consequential single change. It tracks the briefing the Trump administration submitted in Hemani and is plainly designed to harmonize federal regulation with whatever standard the Court adopts when it rules before the term ends in late June.
Rule 4 — “Fugitive from justice,” narrowed
The phrase “fugitive from justice” appears in 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(2) as one of nine categories of prohibited persons. ATF’s pre-2026 interpretation read the phrase broadly: anyone with an outstanding warrant of any kind, in any jurisdiction, for any offense, was prohibited from owning or possessing a firearm.
The new final rule narrows the definition to the original 1968 understanding: a person who has fled across state lines specifically to avoid prosecution or testimony in a felony proceeding. A months-old failure-to-appear warrant for an unpaid traffic citation no longer triggers the federal firearm bar.
For NICS purposes, this is the single change that will most reduce false denials at the gun-counter level. ATF estimates between 12,000 and 20,000 NICS denials per year were attributable to the broader interpretation.
Rule 5 — Interstate machinegun transfers, streamlined
The final rule of the five addresses something the average gun owner will never touch directly but the firearms industry has fought for years: the ATF Form 5320.20 “Application to Transport Interstate or to Temporarily Export Certain Firearms” required for moving registered NFA items, including machineguns, across state lines.
The current process can take 30 to 90 days for written approval. The new rule replaces it with an electronic notification system for transfers between licensed possessors — Class III dealers, Special Occupational Taxpayers, government agencies — with same-day digital acknowledgment. Individual non-licensee transfers still require Form 4 transfers and remain unchanged.
It’s an inside-baseball rule. But for the SOT manufacturers and dealers who move test-and-evaluation samples, training inventory, and rental machineguns between locations, it removes a multi-week bottleneck that has effectively suppressed lawful interstate commerce in registered NFA items.
What this doesn’t change
A few clarifications, because the noise around any DOJ package always outruns the text:
The package does not eliminate the National Firearms Act. Suppressors, short-barreled rifles, machineguns, and AOWs remain NFA items requiring federal registration. The OBBBA-driven elimination of the $200 NFA tax stamp on January 1, 2026, was a separate statutory change.
The package does not reverse the 2023 ATF “frame and receiver” rule on so-called ghost guns. That rule remains the subject of litigation, and Wednesday’s signing did not address it.
The package does not address the Biden-era pistol-brace rule, which has already been vacated by federal courts. Braced pistols not configured as obvious shouldered rifles are back to their pre-2023 status, but the underlying SBR statute still applies if a brace-equipped firearm meets the legal definition of a short-barreled rifle.
And the package does nothing to state-level restrictions. If you live in California, New York, New Jersey, Hawaii, or any of the other suppressor-prohibited or assault-weapon-restricted states, your state laws remain exactly what they were yeste
