Campaigning in 2024, Donald Trump made clear where he stood on gun policy when he pledged to “terminate every single one of the Harris-Biden’s attacks on law-abiding gun owners his first week in office and stand up for our constitutionally enshrined right to bear arms.”

What he didn’t say was that he would enact the most criminal-friendly gun policy of any presidential administration in U.S. history.

As expected, Trump and Attorney General Pam Bondi have moved to roll back Biden-era gun policies that took a tougher line on gun dealers who falsified records, on gun purchases that avoided required background checks, and that regulated “ghost guns” to require serial numbers on formerly untraceable guns or gun parts.

Central to Trump’s deregulation of gun access is his evisceration of the federal agency charged with administering the nation’s gun laws, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives. For decades, gun rights proponents have pilloried the ATF, calling it “scandal-ridden,” an out of control “rogue agency” that has persistently abused its power, and that had amassed “a tyrannical record of misconduct and abuse.”

To be sure, the ATF has blundered, as when it tragically mishandled the siege at the Branch Davidian compound in Waco,........

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