Reload Founder Stephen Gutowski explained the breadth of new regulations about to hit the gun industry during a recent interview.

He joined National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) Director of Public Affairs Mark Oliva for an interview during the group’s trade show in Las Vegas, Nevada last week. The pair discussed how President Joe Biden’s (D.) proposed rule changes would broaden the authority of the ATF while also requiring millions of Americans to register certain firearms. Gutowski described how one rule would require licensed dealers to mark older guns and provide a “much more expansive” definition of firearm.

“The ATF, under President Biden’s executive orders and initiatives he’s taking, wanted to change that definition to make it much more expansive and give the ATF much more power over deciding what is and isn’t a firearm frame or receiver,” Gutowski said. “Really the serialization is the issue at the core of this because you have gun control advocates and the president who say you shouldn’t have un-serialized parts…but serialization itself really wasn’t even required until the 1960s.”

He also described how the ATF’s proposals create a lot of compliance problems for themselves, especially the reclassification of pistol-braced guns to NFA items. Those problems don’t appear to have any sort of solution in the current draft.

“Yes – a lot of these executive orders, these new rules they want to put in place, would require a lot of work on the ATF’s part quite frankly,” Gutowski said. “There would be a lot of registration involved with these. Millions of people could be affected by these new rules. There would be millions and millions of new paperwork, and new rules don’t provide new resources.”