Sponsors (10)
Introduced June 24, 2025 by Seth Magaziner · Last progress June 24, 2025
The bill strengthens federal enforcement, oversight, and penalties to reduce illegal firearms activity and improve public safety, but it increases burdens and legal risks for licensed dealers and individuals, raises due‑process and prosecution concerns, and will impose additional costs on taxpayers.
Law enforcement and communities (urban and rural) will have stronger enforcement tools and deterrents because the bill clarifies mens rea, increases inspections, raises penalties for violations, authorizes inventories tied to traced guns, speeds license terminations, and adds ATF staff.
Consumers and investigators will get better traceability and compliance at licensed dealers because the bill tightens recordkeeping penalties, enables inventories of dealers linked to traced crime guns, and requires secure-storage/transfer standards.
Taxpayers and Congress will gain improved oversight and ATF capacity through mandatory biennial ATF reporting to Congress and a required hiring increase (at least 80 employees) to implement expanded inspection/enforcement duties.
People (including otherwise nonculpable actors) face a higher risk of criminal conviction because narrowing mens rea hurdles and related prosecutorial changes lower the burden to prove conscious intent, raising due-process and fair-notice concerns.
Licensed dealers and small businesses face substantial compliance costs and legal exposure — more inspections, inventories, higher fines, and felony liability for some recordkeeping errors — which could hurt small licensees and discourage market participation.
Stricter penalties and broader prosecution could increase incarceration rates and raise federal court, prison, and enforcement costs for taxpayers.
Based on analysis of 13 sections of legislative text.
Strengthens federal enforcement by lowering mens rea, expanding inspections and penalties, enabling license suspensions/revocations and inventories, and adding ATF staffing/reporting requirements.
Makes a series of changes to federal firearms law to strengthen enforcement against illegal gun sales and noncompliant dealers. It lowers the mental-state requirement in parts of the dealer statute, increases allowable inspections, raises criminal penalties for certain recordkeeping and transfer offenses, authorizes license suspensions/revocations and civil fines for violations, requires inventory and reporting triggers when many crime guns trace to a licensee, and directs the ATF to add staff and deliver biennial reports to Congress. The bill expands administrative enforcement tools for the Attorney General and ATF, increases potential criminal exposure for some licensees, and creates new compliance and recordkeeping demands on federally licensed importers, manufacturers, and dealers. It includes procedural changes to hearings and court review and a severability clause; it does not appropriate new funds but authorizes hiring at least 80 ATF employees to implement the changes.