ATF Keeps Biden's Ghost Gun Rule — On Trump's Watch

Despite widespread expectations that the Trump administration would dismantle Biden's 2022 frames and receivers rule, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives has signaled it will keep the regulation intact while drafting a replacement. The agency quietly requested stays in two federal cases — VanDerStok v. Bondi and Defense Distributed v. Bondi — buying itself time to rewrite, not repeal, the rule.

Let that sink in. The ATF isn't killing this regulatory overreach. It's repackaging it.

The Biden-era rule dramatically expanded the legal definition of a 'firearm frame or receiver,' effectively subjecting unfinished parts, home builds, and 80% kits to the same federal requirements as fully serialized firearms. Gun rights advocates have argued for years the rule exceeds ATF's statutory authority under the Gun Control Act — a position multiple federal courts have backed.

Acting AG Todd Blanche controls the Justice Department that oversees the ATF. Neither Blanche nor the agency has offered any explanation for why a rule that targets law-abiding builders and hobbyists deserves preservation in any form.

Defense Distributed founder Cody Wilson and other plaintiffs fought this rule at enormous legal cost. The ATF's move to pause litigation — rather than concede the rule's illegality — is a direct insult to every Second Amendment organization that spent years and millions of dollars challenging it in court.

Whatever form the replacement rule takes, it will almost certainly preserve the core power grab: federal jurisdiction over parts that no plain reading of the Gun Control Act defines as firearms.

Gun owners should not mistake bureaucratic reshuffling for reform. A rewritten bad rule is still a bad rule.

Contact Acting AG Todd Blanche's office and demand the ATF withdraw the frames and receivers rule entirely — not revise it, not replace it. Repeal it. Anything less is surrender dressed up as compromise.