The Trump administration is preparing to deliver a long-sought win to the gun industry by loosening restrictions on certain commercially available firearms and ammunition exports.
The proposal would put the Commerce Department in charge of overseeing exports of handguns and sporting rifles, separating those personal protection firearms from military-grade weaponry such as aircraft and missile exports, which will still be governed by the State Department.
Firearms industry officials say the change will help cut down on the hurdles businesses and even individuals face.
“It’s very onerous,” said Larry Keane of the National Shooting Sports Foundation. “[It’s] very important to the industry — something we’ve been pursuing for many years.”
The new rules could also nix an annual fee of $2,250 or more that gunmakers are required to pay to register with the State Department. That rule ends up snaring even some mom-and-pop operations, Mr. Keane said.
“As an individual, for example, if you were to drill a hole in the receiver of your firearm to mount a scope, you’ve engaged in manufacturing as far as the Arms Export Control Act is concerned and you are supposed to register as an individual,” he said.
A State Department official said the change is part of a longer-term process to overhaul the U.S. export process by tightening controls on military-grade equipment with national security implications, and shifting oversight of semiautomatic rifles and pistols to the more business-oriented Commerce Department.
“We kind of refer to it as the Walmart rule,” the official said. “If it’s like something you can buy at a Walmart, why should we have control?”
Mr. Keane said the change could open up new markets for sales to foreign governments or law enforcement forces, but his group said it’s less about generating a big uptick in new foreign orders and more about cutting red tape.
The process to change from State to Commerce began under President Obama, whose aides agreed that the State Department didn’t need to be involved at that level of granularity.
“We need a system that dispenses with the 95 percent of easy cases and lets us concentrate our resources on the remaining 5 percent,” then-Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said in 2010.
The Obama administration processed new rules for 18 of 21 categories, including for weapons like ballistic missiles and explosives.
It was on the brink of approving the new rules for the final three categories, which included more commonly available firearms such as rifles and handguns, but pulled back after the December 2012 Newtown elementary school shooting.
President Trump restarted the process, and his budget office recently finished its regulatory review of the final changes. A proposed rule could now be published in a matter of days or weeks, kicking off an official public comment period.
Congressional Republicans, and some Democrats, have been pushing the federal government to complete the export control reform process.
House Majority Whip Steve Scalise, who was gravely wounded in a shooting at a congressional baseball practice last year, has long been one of Congress’s leading advocates for the changes.
His office said Mr. Scalise is “pleased” that the “long overdue reforms” are moving forward.
“He has been fighting to move this process forward for years, and will continue to do so until these final categories covering firearms and ammunition protected by the Second Amendment are addressed,” said Scalise spokeswoman Lauren Fine.
Opponents, though, say national security is the key reason why the changes shouldn’t be made, and that the looser restrictions for lower-grade weaponry could make it easier for terrorists or other bad actors to get their hands on U.S.-made guns.
“Taking arms sales oversight away from the State Department, which is tasked with protecting our national security interests abroad, and giving it to the Commerce Department, which is not, is a bad idea,” said Rep. Norma Torres, a California Democrat who is pushing legislation to limit the changes, in a statement to The Washington Times.
• David Sherfinski can be reached at dsherfinski@washingtontimes.com.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.