Bloomberg's Reporters Spent Months Trying to Bury Cekada. Their Own Data Exonerated Him.

Bloomberg's gun-control content machine spent months on what was supposed to be a kill shot against Cekada's decision to repeal Biden's so-called 'gun show loophole' rule. The Trace reviewed more than 600 federal unlicensed-dealing prosecutions. Their own conclusion: the Biden rule "neither resulted in federal overreach nor meaningfully enhanced enforcement."

Sit with that for a second.

**Gun-control advocates spent years screaming this rule was the last line between criminals and easy guns.** Biden's ATF bureaucrats drafted it, defended it in court, and paraded it as a public-safety landmark. Now The Trace's reporters — citing former ATF agents, federal prosecutors, and their own case-by-case review — are quietly admitting it was theater.

Cekada signed 34 regulatory rollbacks on April 29, the same day the Senate confirmed him, flanked by gun-industry executives. The Biden rule was the headline repeal. Gun-control groups immediately predicted blood in the aisles at gun shows. The Trace launched its investigation to prove them right.

It couldn't.

What the 600 prosecutions actually show: ATF was already targeting serious traffickers running illegal operations — not the hobbyist who sold a rifle to his neighbor. The Biden rule added definitional language around things like advertising or renting storefronts as markers of being a "dealer." In practice, prosecutors never needed it to nail actual criminals, and they weren't deploying it against ordinary gun owners either.

**Here's what The Trace won't say out loud:** This rule was never engineered to stop criminal violence. It was a regulatory crowbar built to blur the line between private sellers and federally licensed dealers — quietly expanding the pool of Americans who could face federal prosecution for a private transaction. Cekada read it for exactly what it was and killed it.

The Trace frames the findings as "much ado about nothing" to sand down the embarrassment. Don't take that framing. The accurate read: gun-control advocates lied about this rule's power for years, demanded its passage, attacked its repeal, and their own investigation just confirmed it was junk policy from day one.

Cekada's 34 rollbacks deserve real scrutiny — that's the job of every informed gun owner watching this administration. But on this specific rule, you don't need a pro-2A analyst to make the case. The opposition's own research already did.

**When The Trace's 600-case investigation goes hunting for a boogeyman and comes home empty, that's not a non-story. That's a confession.** Read their piece — their data is the strongest pro-2A argument published this week, and they know it.