Handguns in the Mailbox: The Fine Print of the Biggest Gun Rollback in Decades
Our mail carrier already brings us birthday cards, tax notices, and the occasional jury summons. If the Trump administration gets its way, that same truck could soon be carrying handguns to doorsteps across the country.
That is just one piece of what gun violence prevention advocates are calling a tsunami of deregulation. In late April, according to Axios, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives unveiled nearly three dozen final and proposed rules, a package that PBS News reports includes more than 30 changes announced the same day the Senate confirmed Robert Cekada as ATF director. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche called it the most comprehensive regulatory reform package in the agency’s history.
The centerpiece is the repeal of a 2024 rule designed to close what’s known as the gun show loophole. That rule, built on the 2022 Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, required thousands more sellers to get licensed and run background checks on buyers outside traditional storefronts, per NBC News. Now it’s headed for the shredder. To be fair, an investigation by The Trace found the rule never meaningfully boosted prosecutions. But there is a difference between fixing a tool that underperformed and throwing it away while the industry applauds. And the industry was literally in the room. The Trace reported that executives from the country’s largest gun trade organizations flanked Cekada as he signed the changes.
Then there’s the mail. The Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel concluded in January that a 1927 ban on mailing handguns, widely considered the first federal gun law, is unconstitutional. According to CBS News, the Postal Service formally proposed allowing handgun shipments on April 2, and the public comment period closed May 4. The National Rifle Association argues the old ban created needless headaches for gun owners who follow the law. Opponents counter that mailed handguns are easier to steal, easier to traffic, and easier to move around state background check laws.
Here’s the part that is really scary: The ATF admitted the danger in its own paperwork. In a proposed rule narrowing who counts as mentally unfit to own a gun, the agency wrote that the added risk “may be minimal, or may be considerably greater (up to and including potential mass casualty events),” as reported by Axios. In other words, the agency tasked with keeping guns out of dangerous hands acknowledged, in writing, that its own proposal could contribute to mass casualty events. And it proposed the rule anyway.
This is happening at a strange moment. Gun deaths are finally falling. The CDC counted 44,447 firearm deaths in 2024. The national gun death rate dropped 7 percent from 2023, the largest decline since 1995. That progress did not happen by accident. It happened alongside community violence intervention, tighter dealer oversight, and yes, expanded background checks. Daniel Webster of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions said these rollbacks are a green light to the part of the industry that profits from crime.
We still have time to weigh in. These are proposed rules, subject to public comment, legal challenge, and political pressure. The question is whether we treat regulatory fine print as somebody else’s problem or recognize it for what it is: decisions about whose safety counts. A gun death happens roughly every 12 minutes in this country, according to Johns Hopkins. The clock is the one thing nobody is deregulating. Go beyond the headlines…
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