Why the ATF revoked fewer gun dealer licenses in 2025 | The Excerpt
Why the ATF revoked fewer gun dealer licenses in 2025 | The Excerpt
Dana Taylor, USA TODAYFri, May 15, 2026 at 1:25 PM UTC
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Why the ATF revoked fewer gun dealer licenses in 2025 | The Excerpt
On the Friday, May 15, 2026, episode of The Excerpt podcast: The ATF sharply reduced gun dealer license revocations in 2025, signaling a shift under President Donald Trump. The agency also stopped publicly listing revoked dealers, citing privacy for gun owners and the industry, as highlighted in a recent hearing. USA TODAY Investigative Reporter Nick Penzenstadler joins The Excerpt to break down what’s behind the change and what it means.
Hit play on the player below to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript beneath it. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.
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Dana Taylor:
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, better known as the ATF, dramatically reduced the number of gun dealers who had their licenses revoked last year, signaling a new approach under President Donald Trump. One of the practices ATF has ended is publicly listing revoked dealers, holding a hearing just yesterday focused on how to protect the privacy of both gun owners and the gun industry. Is this a move toward fairer enforcement or is it a step back from oversight? Hello and welcome to USA TODAY's The Excerpt. I'm Dana Taylor. Today is Friday, May 15th, 2026. Joining me to discuss why the ATF stripped licenses from fewer gun shops in 2025 is USA TODAY Investigative Reporter Nick Penzenstadler. It's so good to speak with you, Nick.
Nick Penzenstadler:
Thanks, Dana. Thanks for having me.
Dana Taylor:
Nick, people may hear ATF and immediately think politics, but the numbers do tell a story here. Only 56 gun dealer licenses were revoked in 2025. It's down from 183 in 2024. What actually changed inside the agency?
Nick Penzenstadler:
So this has been a political football for years and we've followed this and there are administrations that put emphasis on cracking down on trafficking and gun shops, particularly like with the Biden administration. And then Trump was elected and signed an executive order right after being sworn into office saying we need to revamp some of these policies. So we're seeing the result of that now where the more lenient hand at gun shops and gun licensees is back in the operating manual. So they're taking fewer licenses, they're giving people more chances and the numbers of licenses revoked is reflecting that.
Dana Taylor:
If we pull back and look further back than just the last couple of years, how unusual is this drop?
Nick Penzenstadler:
Yeah, we're back to these Trump era numbers back to 2016, 2017. If you look back, just dozens of shops instead of well over a hundred with the Biden administration. And remember, the ATF during those years just a few years ago was doing this enhanced enforcement and taking this very seriously and being quicker to revoke licenses.
Dana Taylor:
Last year's decline coincides with the end of the Biden administration's zero tolerance policy. What did zero tolerance do? What kinds of violations were flagged?
Nick Penzenstadler:
Yeah, so this has been described in a variety of ways. It's an enhanced enforcement policy to key in on serious infractions and what they call willful violators who flout the law, who knew that they were doing something wrong, these gun shops, and continued to do it anyway. It's been described by opponents of it as paperwork, clerical, non-material issues, but really we're talking about things like selling a gun without performing the background check correctly or not maintaining records that are really important for the ATF down the line to trace that firearm and help law enforcement solve crimes. So depending on how you look at this, they're either minor clerical errors or could be really monumental important crime fighting tools.
Dana Taylor:
New ATF director, Robert Cekada announced 34 proposed rules. Nick, what's the agency now prioritizing? And what's been the response from both advocacy groups and the gun dealer industry?
Nick Penzenstadler:
Yeah. The gun violence prevention folks were aghast at a lot of these rules, particularly this rollback of engaged in the business. And what that means is, where is the line? Are you going to gun shows and are you a hobbyist or are you routinely selling several guns every month, processing credit cards, this is your main source of income? That the Biden administration put in as the rule, that you are no longer just a hobbyist, you are quote unquote engaged in the business of selling guns. One of the key rollbacks that was announced recently is ending that policy and going back to a different policy of hobbyists have a little bit more leeway to do that.
Dana Taylor:
Why did the Trump administration want this change?
Nick Penzenstadler:
Well, there's always been ambiguity and many administrations have pledged to put a number or put some kind of line on it. But the real concern here is that there are freewheeling untraced gun sellers out there. And of course, when you become a federal licensed dealer, you're under much more scrutiny, you're doing all this paperwork and of course you're fulfilling your needs as a background check. So the private sellers don't have to do that. And the idea behind this change was we have groups out there that are selling, they need to be licensed, but the director made the point that they measured the impact of new registrations and they saw it as minimal. So they didn't think that this was being an effective rule change.
Dana Taylor:
Nick, as I mentioned earlier, one of the practices ATF has ended is publicly listing revoked dealers, which you wrote gun industry leaders labeled a name and shame campaign. Director Cekada talked about this in the hearing yesterday. Let's give a listen.
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Robert Cekada:
We should be holding people accountable and we should be truthful with what that data says. Those DL2 lists were not designed by me or anyone else to use as a name and shame campaign, but that's exactly what they were used as and that's not what the intention was.
Dana Taylor:
What is main argument here and does it hold water?
Nick Penzenstadler:
So there are a few things happening here. There was a new practice under the previous administration to publicly list gun shops that had their licenses revoked and they had the regulatory history, the paperwork behind it leading up to their revocation. Usually that was years of inspections by ATF inspectors, audits that showed that they had some serious violations and this is why someone is being removed from this program. You've lost your privilege, you can no longer sell guns. There's also this kind of obscure program referred to as DL2, the Demand Letter 2 program that annually targets dealers that sold the most number of guns over 25 that were recovered at crime scenes or in a crime in a short time to crime period. So the chain of custody went from they sold it somehow the bad guy got it and it turns up at a crime scene.
So of course this ends up being lots of big box dealers, people who sell the most guns, but also reflects where crime guns are coming from. So gun violence prevention groups and the media, we have obtained these lists and used it in that way to shine a light on. If you're wondering where crime guns are being sold and where straw purchasers are targeting gun shops, here's the list. And of course this caused this tension because the gun industry did not like this attention. They say it unfairly characterizes them. And the director yesterday was saying this was not intended to be used this way and the data is being manipulated. That's why it needed to be paused. So another interesting part with this whole debate is Andrew Clyde, the Georgia Republican is a gun shop owner himself and his shop is on that list. It was selling more than 25 guns that have turned up at crime scenes and he's sensitive to that and said it put his shop on a list and unfairly targeted him.
Dana Taylor:
I want to turn now to some of the 56 dealers who did have their licenses revoked in 2025. Some closed permanently but others reopened. Let's start with one that closed. What happened with Grips by Larry, an Arizona shop that lost its license?
Nick Penzenstadler:
Yeah. So when we obtained this list just recently, this name jumped off the page. This shop from Arizona has been in the news because in 2025 the owners were indicted in a gun trafficking case. And then with this new administration and new focus on the Mexican cartels, superseding indictment was handed down just in March where this scheme and the people who own this shop were involved in aiding terrorism because these cartels have been designated as foreign terrorists. So these charges took on very much more serious significance and now the shop is also appearing on this list for being targeted by the ATF and having their license revoked.
Dana Taylor:
And as I mentioned, others reopened under new ownership or new branding. What did John Duncan share with you regarding the gun shop he and his wife operate in Leesburg, Ohio?
Nick Penzenstadler:
Yeah, it was great. I was able to connect with this gun shop owner because I noticed that on their Facebook page, they announced that they were closing last August. They didn't explain why and then they reopened with a new name. And of course we saw that on the list they were revoked. So their previous license had been revoked. They had an audit. The owner talked to me and he said, "We made some mistakes and it was embarrassing," but he took issue with how the administration treated him. He felt targeted, he felt embarrassed, and he felt that they were making a point. So he has been able to reopen, rename the shop with a different administration and he's back selling guns. So he's part of this new regime that's been invited back to either reapply for their old license or clean things up and get back going under a new name.
Dana Taylor:
Nick, one thing that stands out is that a gun dealer's record doesn't reset. Enforcement records remain cumulative. Does that mean what looks like a shift toward leniency right now could be temporary?
Nick Penzenstadler:
Exactly. So this is what the experts and the attorneys we spoke to cautioned against, is that if you're feeling like it's a new day and Trump is the president and there's a friendly administration, it's important to remember that your record is being scrutinized on a time delay. So if you get inspected in two years, they'll be looking back at how you treated your paperwork today. And these rules that have been proposed are important that they're proposed changes by the ATF, so they're still not finalized. So the point was these are still regulations that need to be followed and your record will follow you into the future so you should just stick by the book.
Dana Taylor:
What was your biggest takeaway from yesterday's oversight hearing?
Nick Penzenstadler:
Well, I think it's really interesting. There's this tension about privacy and about gun rights and there are all these different groups and interests and everybody wants more information. The media wants more information, some of the advocacy groups want more information, but it's bumping up against privacy and gun owners are notoriously private and they don't want their information shared and they don't want gun shop names shared improperly. So those things are always going to be in tension. And I think we saw that at the hearing that they're bumping up against each other.
Dana Taylor:
Nick Penzenstadler is an investigative reporter for USA TODAY. It's so good to have you on.
Nick Penzenstadler:
Thank you.
Dana Taylor:
Thanks to our senior producer, Kaely Monahan, for her production assistance. Our executive producer is Laura Beatty. Let us know what you think of this episode by sending a note to podcasts at usatoday.com. Thanks for listening. I'm Dana Taylor. I'll be back Monday morning with another episode of USA TODAY's The Excerpt.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: ATF Trump-era change leads to fewer gun dealer licenses revoked | The Excerpt
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