Gun-rights advocates celebrating the end of the ATF’s “zero tolerance” policy toward licensed gun dealers are acting prematurely.

That’s according to the trade association that represents America’s firearm dealers and manufacturers. The National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) said that despite media reports to the contrary, the ATF’s strict enforcement toward federally licensed gun stores is still very much alive and in force.

“NSSF has spoken with ATF and the policy has not been repealed,” Mark Oliva, the group’s managing director for public affairs, told The Reload.

The confusion over the policy’s fate stems from an August 2024 internal ATF memo unearthed earlier this month during the course of a lawsuit gun-rights advocates filed against the agency. The memo appeared to have softened the agency’s threshold for revoking federal licenses by adding new language specifying what behavior qualifies as a “willful” violation that should trigger revocation.

“For purposes of the regulatory provisions of the GCA, the terms ‘willful’ and ‘willfulness’ mean a purposeful disregard of, a plain indifference to, or a reckless disregard of a known legal obligation,” the memo reads. “Willfulness requires fact specific application of law.”

It also added language stating that a single, inadvertent error in failing to complete forms may not amount to a “willful” violation on the part a licensed dealer, even if the dealer should have known his legal obligation for accurate paperwork.

While those additions speak to many of the types of violations gun-rights advocates have said resulted in a spike in unfair revocations, the memo notably retains its “zero tolerance” language. Oliva said the agency’s behavior has not changed in practice.

“That letter didn’t rescind the policy,” Oliva said. “Since then, we are aware that federal firearms licensee (FFL) inspections have continued and have not seen any indication, nor report of, any substantive change regarding how those inspections should be conducted or what the ATF has defined as a ‘willful’ violation under this ‘zero tolerance’ policy.”

FFL inspection data published by the ATF show that monthly inspection-related revocations last year dipped slightly on average beginning in September, the month after the memo was released. However, November 2024 did see the second-highest monthly number of revocations for the entire year and the third-highest monthly total since the agency adopted its zero-tolerance approach. In total, annual revocations in 2024 were down slightly following dramatic year-over-year increases from 2021-2023.

The ATF’s zero tolerance policy was first instituted at the behest of President Joe Biden (D.) in June 2021. In a bid to crack down on gun trafficking and “rogue firearm dealers,” it directed the agency to increase its inspections and begin revoking FFLs for single violations of federal law, with a particular emphasis placed on dealers found to be “willfully transferring a firearm to a prohibited person, failing to run a required background check, falsifying records, such as a firearms transaction form, failing to respond to an ATF tracing request, or refusing to permit ATF to conduct an inspection in violation of the law.”

FFL revocations began ramping up almost immediately each year after Biden established the directive. The ATF revoked 147 licenses in 2024, 157 licenses in 2023, 88 licenses in 2022, and five in the final six months of 2021. Another 247 FFLs voluntarily surrendered their licenses after an ATF inspection over the same time.

However, that heightened enforcement zeal quickly came at the expense of strained relations between the firearms industry and the ATF. The industry and its allies began complaining that, rather than combatting criminal enterprises, licenses were instead being revoked for innocent clerical errors and other minor infractions by agents using, at times, controversial enforcement tactics.

“Licensed firearm retailers are often the front line of defense in preventing illegal straw purchases of firearms and their cooperation with ATF field offices is paramount to preventing firearms from being possessed by prohibited individuals,” Oliva said. “Instead of using the ATF as a government bureau to assist the firearm industry to stay within regulations, President Biden and his ATF turned it into a steel trap by which they snared firearm retailers to run them out of business.”

This increasingly fraught relationship between the agency and American gun-rights enthusiasts caught the attention of President Donald Trump (R.) on the campaign trail last year. He pledged to terminate the zero-tolerance policy along with the rest of his predecessor’s executive gun policy actions once he retook the White House. However, his early tenure has been quiet on the gun policy front.

Oliva said the NSSF has been in contact with the Trump administration about “the priority of reversing the ATF’s zero tolerance policy” and that the group “eagerly anticipates” his nomination of a new ATF Director that could shift the agency’s priorities. Other gun-rights groups are also looking to turn up the pressure on the Trump administration to fulfill his campaign promises to gun voters. In a Wednesday email blast, Gun Owners of America (GOA) urged its members to sign a letter campaign urging the Trump administration to take action to rescind several Biden-era gun rules, including the ATF “zero-tolerance” policy.

“President Trump promised gun-owning voters that Biden’s unconstitutional anti-gun disasters would ‘get ripped up and torn out’ during the first week of his Administration,” the group’s email reads. “We just officially passed that milestone in the Trump-Vance Administration – and Biden’s anti-gun policies are still in effect.”

Neither the White House nor the ATF responded to multiple requests for comment on the status of the zero-tolerance policy.