President Donald Trump’s proposed Fiscal Year 2026 budget would cut $486 million in funding from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF), according to the New York Times.
ABC News quoted an anonymous senior White House official who posited the ATF’s “abusive regulatory decrees” against gun owners as part of the motivation for the cuts.
The FY 2026 budget posted by the White House says;
The Budget bolsters the Second Amendment by cutting funding for ATF offices that have criminalized law-abiding gun ownership through regulatory fiat. The previous administration used the ATF to attack gun-owning Americans and undermine the Second Amendment by requiring nearuniversal background checks; subjecting otherwise lawful gun owners to up to 10 years in prison for failing to register pistol braces that make it possible for disabled veterans to use firearms; the imposition of excessive restrictions on homemade firearms; and the revocation of Federal Firearms Licenses, which shut down small businesses across the Nation.
A May 2, 2025, statement from the White House noted the proposed cuts to ATF funding are being made to “[halt] the ATF’s criminalizing of gun-owning Americans and instead, focusing on stopping illegal firearms traffickers and violent gang members.”
The NYT also noted Trump’s White House wants to end “excessive restrictions on homemade firearms.” Those restrictions were enacted via regulatory gun control by the ATF during the Biden Administration.
AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio, a member of Gun Owners of America, a Pulsar Night Vision pro-staffer, and the director of global marketing for Lone Star Hunts. He was a Visiting Fellow at the Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal in 2010 and has a Ph.D. in Military History. Follow him on Instagram: @awr_hawkins. You can sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange. Reach him directly: [email protected].
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