Trump administration takes major steps to roll back gun regulations

By — Ali Rogin Ali Rogin By — Ali Schmitz Ali Schmitz Leave your feedback Share Copy URL https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/trump-administration-takes-major-steps-to-roll-back-gun-regulations Email Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Pinterest Tumblr Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Transcript Audio During his race for the White House, President Trump pledged to expand Second Amendment rights nationwide. Now his administration is taking major steps to roll back gun restrictions put into place for public safety. Justice correspondent Ali Rogin discussed the administration’s efforts with Chip Brownlee, a staff writer at The Trace, covering federal gun policy. Read the Full Transcript Notice: Transcripts are machine and human generated and lightly edited for accuracy. They may contain errors. Amna Nawaz: During his race for the White House, President Donald Trump pledged to expand Second Amendment rights nationwide. Now his administration is taking major steps to roll back gun restrictions put into place for public safety. Our justice correspondent, Ali Rogin, has more. Ali Rogin: Amna, earlier this year, the Justice Department unveiled a major road map to reduce regulations on purchasing firearms, arguing the changes would -- quote -- "modernize gun policy." Now the department is also taking more targeted actions, going after Democratic-led states for their own gun restrictions. For more on the Trump administration's efforts to broaden Second Amendment rights, I'm joined now by Chip Brownlee. He's a staff writer at The Trace covering federal gun policy. Chip, thanks so much. Welcome to the "News Hour." I want to ask you first about these rollbacks that the DOJ has announced. What rules and policies would be impacted here? Chip Brownlee, The Trace: Yes, so the ATF, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, has proposed a range of rollbacks, about three dozen in total. I would say most of the proposals that they have are actually pretty administrative. They update and modernize some of the processes that gun dealers use. But there are a couple of things in there that are pretty significant. One that has gotten a lot of criticism from the gun reform side of things is a rule that was intended to close the gun show loophole. The Trump administration has proposed rolling back that rule. And then there are some other things like reducing regulations on short-barrel rifles and bump stocks, bump stocks being the -- one of those devices that was used in the Las Vegas mass shooting in 2017. And some of those regulations are actually just bringing things back in line with what the Supreme Court has said in terms of things like the bump stocks. But the big thing is the rule that was intended to close the gun show loophole. Ali Rogin: There's another rollback that's caused some controversy, and that is reducing the restrictions on people with mental illness to own a firearm. That's upset some gun safety groups. What kind of risks are involved with that ro