The U.S. Commerce Department last Friday unveiled a new rule that aims to make last year's "temporary pause" on overseas gun exports a much more enduring roadblock.
The 130-page Interim Final Rule, announced by the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security, comes six months after the agency's 90-day halt in issuing any new export licenses for firearms, ammunition, and related items announced last October.
It brings with it a host of proposed changes to the agency's licensing policy for the legal exports of guns, ammo, and related components – including a "presumption of denial" standard for export application to at least 36 countries right off the bat – as well as a reduction in the length of firearms export licenses from four years to one, and a carve-out of semi-auto firearms into a new export classification for additional scrutiny.
The administration bills the move as a sort of white knight intervention to reduce the risk of American guns being misused overseas – by drastically limiting how they can be legally exported.
"The Commerce Department is protecting America’s national security by making it harder for criminals, terrorists, and cartels to get their hands on U.S.-made firearms," said U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, a Democrat who repeatedly stumped for increased gun control while governor of Rhode Island and was a supporter of billionaire former anti-gun advocate Michael Bloomberg's bid for the White House.
Likewise, Bloomberg's gun control group, Everytown, parroted the administration’s talking points on the new rule saying the move would also "promote public safety in the United States," while aiming for gun industry profits.
However, firearms industry experts see the rule as a continuation of the White House's "whole of government" attack on the industry under the false pretense of advancing U.S. national security.
"The enmity of the Biden administration against the firearm industry and Second Amendment rights is without parallel. This is deeply troubling the lengths to which this administration will go to turn the levers of government against a constitutionally protected industry in order to cozy up to special-interest gun control donors,” said Lawrence G. Keane, the National Shooting Sports Foundation's Senior Vice President & General Counsel.
According to data from federal regulators, no less than 337,680 pistols, 217,833 rifles, 43,312 shotguns, 24,691 revolvers, and 5,498 miscellaneous firearms were exported by U.S.-based companies in 2022.
The BIS estimates the rule would halt some $250 million in overseas sales by U.S. manufacturers and exporters, a figure seen by the NSSF as wildly underestimated. As a likely result of the less restrictive "90-day pause" alone, the January 2024 Firearms and Ammunition Export numbers from the NSSF show a marked decline of 38.6 percent in the handgun category (from 37,008 to 22,713 units) and almost a 23-percent decrease in shotguns (from 8,003 to 6,165 units) compared to the same period from 2023.
Make such a decline an everlasting feature of federal gun control efforts, and the outcome will likely result in a loss of American jobs.
"The supposed ‘temporary pause’ to review firearm export policies was a farce," said Keane. "It was an effort to buy the administration time to gin up policies that would strike at the heart of the ability of this industry to stay in business. This has been the end goal since President Biden said from the Democratic debate stage that ‘firearm manufacturers are the enemy.’ This is a wholesale attack on the industry that provides the means for Americans exercising their Second Amendment rights."
Further, existing controls already work to curb shipments to dangerous end users. According to examples highlighted in a March 2024 BIS report of 34 cases of individuals illegally attempting to send firearms, parts, accessories, or body armor outside of the country, none were from licensed U.S. firearm exporters.
The original pause brought a scathing rebuke of the Commerce Department from Republican lawmakers on Capitol Hill, including letters signed by 87 members of the House and 46 senators.
"The Biden BIS has gone rogue," said U.S. Rep. Mark Green (R-Tenn) in a statement to BIS’s new rule, saying it "punishes law-abiding business owners all because of the left’s antipathy for the Second Amendment. Our Founders warned against this kind of sweeping government overreach."
He continued, “American gun exporters and small businesses have leapt over every hurdle that this administration has erected, yet the goalpost keeps moving. This rule will overload BIS and increase the backlog of licensing, but maybe that’s the point. The Biden administration must end its war on the Second Amendment."
The rule will be released to the Federal Register on April 30 and have a public comment period that will remain open until July 1.
The NSSF "is considering its legal options and will simultaneously submit written comments demonstrating the true economic impact and the harm to American businesses, jobs and local economies wrought by this politically driven policy change."
Photo: American-made M1911 style pistols on display at the IWA Show in Germany. Produced by Bersa in a new factory in Georgia, such guns, popular with collectors and target shooters, would be subject to heightened scrutiny for export. (Photo: Chris Eger/Guns.com)
