The raffles had been posted to Facebook with engaging prizes for winners – PlayStations, NBA tickets and even weapons from an area store.
But the person working the contests, authorities later realized, wasn’t licensed to deal firearms. In truth, he was a convicted felon.
As brokers from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives appeared into the contests, the person instructed them that the proprietor of the store offering the weapons knew about his felony file and helped him anyway – an allegation the proprietor denied.
ATF brokers dug into the books for that store – The Outdoorsman’s Attic, in Sheridan, Colorado – and located that the proprietor had falsified his information to cover the felon’s function.
Citing these violations and a litany of different issues, the ATF under former President Joe Biden’s administration yanked The Outdoorsman’s Attic’s license two years in the past.
Now, under President Donald Trump, it’s back in enterprise.
And it’s not alone.
A NCS investigation discovered almost a dozen shops that had their licenses revoked under Biden have now been allowed to promote firearms once more under Trump, whose administration has adopted a softer strategy to gun regulation – together with by ending a Biden-era “zero-tolerance” coverage aimed toward cracking down on the worst offenders amongst gun shops. In at the very least 5 cases, Trump’s Department of Justice dropped circumstances the place gun shops had been difficult Biden-era revocations, permitting the shops to promote weapons once more.
ATF confirmed that it invited sellers to re-apply for licenses lost under Biden, and granted new ones to at the very least 23 shops, although it declined to establish the precise firearms sellers.
Some of the companies that had been granted new licenses under the Trump administration had been beforehand flagged for critical violations. Two had acquired a number of letters warning that at the very least 25 weapons they’d bought had been discovered at crime scenes over a one-year interval, in line with ATF information reviewed by NCS. At least 175 crime weapons from these two shops had been recovered from 2021 by 2024, in line with these warning letters.
Some former ATF officers mentioned it’s significantly regarding these companies at the moment are licensed once more, as a result of shops that fail to do background checks or that promote to straw consumers gasoline a disproportionate proportion of violent crime across the nation.
“We were laser focused on inspecting the gun stores that were the source of crime guns,” mentioned Marianna Mitchem, who was answerable for the inspection division earlier than she left ATF in May 2025. She now works as an adviser for Everytown, a gun violence prevention advocacy group.
She famous that straw consumers and unlicensed sellers are the highest means by which traffickers illegally purchase weapons, including, “The bottom line is, ATF isn’t focused on firearms trafficking anymore… and it’s very sad, because our citizens, our communities, are going to pay the price for this.”
ATF chief counsel Robert Leider disputed the concept ATF has decreased oversight of gun sellers.
“We are taking corrupt dealers very seriously and we are bringing serious charges when we find them,” he instructed NCS. “We are taking straw buyers very seriously. The difference is that this administration does not see any tension between fighting violent crime and reducing restrictions on law-abiding citizens.”
Leider mentioned for these gun shops that regained licenses yanked under Biden-era insurance policies, “We did both a legal and a factual review. Some of the cases of people who reapplied involve technical violations, but not of the magnitude that gun control advocates have been claiming.”
The Outdoorsman’s Attic declined to remark. Other shops that regained licenses under Trump argued they’d been unfairly focused by ATF under Biden.
“We were not giving out guns to people that … should not have them or purposely like not running background checks just to get a sale done,” mentioned Will Boswell, the proprietor of The Tactical Edge, a Tennessee store that lost its license in 2023 and regained it final fall after reapplying under Trump. “We’ve never done anything like that. We will never do anything like that. But the way that the ATF portrayed that and spoke to us, it made us feel like criminals.”
Since Trump returned to workplace final yr, the White House has considerably lower the variety of ATF inspectors and decreased their authority to advocate that sellers’ licenses be revoked for violating federal gun legal guidelines, as NCS has reported. ATF has additionally decreased transparency round its enforcement by eradicating firearms-license inspection reviews and notices of revocations from its web site.
Leider mentioned ATF did so as a result of “The reports were being abused by advocacy groups to target specific businesses.”
ATF mentioned it carried out “approximately 8,630” compliance inspections of gun sellers in 2025, and revoked 50 federal firearms licenses – 1,066 fewer inspections and roughly one-fourth as many revoked firearms licenses as in Biden’s final fiscal yr in workplace. It’s unclear what number of of these 2025 inspections or revocations came about earlier than Trump took workplace on January 20.
In 2021, the Biden administration adopted an “enhanced enforcement” or zero-tolerance coverage, which allowed ATF inspectors to advocate seller licenses be revoked extra shortly for critical violations, corresponding to failing to conduct background checks, promoting weapons to felons, falsifying information, and ignoring legislation enforcement gun-trace requests.
Even under Biden, gun shops that had their licenses revoked had been at occasions in a position to proceed working after being granted a brand new license under a relative or enterprise affiliate’s title, NCS discovered.
In August 2024, ATF revoked the license for Southern Maryland Pawn Brokers, in line with ATF paperwork. Instead of preventing the revocation, proprietor Brett Smith consolidated the enterprise right into a second store and took his title off that license, he mentioned, leaving it in his daughter’s title as an alternative.
“We made some mistakes,” Smith mentioned in an interview, although he additionally argued that “the Biden people went wacko with their periods and commas; it was all administrative, paperwork problems.”
Still, throughout Biden’s final yr in workplace, ATF revoked 195 gun sellers’ licenses, the most important quantity in additional than twenty years.
Although these revocations amounted to lower than 1 / 4 of 1 p.c of the federal licenses held by sellers, pawnshops, gunmakers and importers, some business critics lashed out. NSSF, a firearms business commerce affiliation, accused the Biden administration of “carrying out a politically driven agenda to drive firearm retailers out of business.”
Within two months of Trump taking workplace, the zero-tolerance coverage was gone and shops that lost licenses under the coverage had been invited to reapply. At the identical time, the DOJ started dropping circumstances introduced by shops difficult revocations.
ATF mentioned it was launching “a new era of reform,” centered on “reducing unnecessary burdens on law-abiding businesses and citizens” and “protecting American communities from violent crime.”
The gun business celebrated the change, however gun-safety advocates warned that it might result in extra weapons entering into the palms of individuals who shouldn’t have them.
“Crime guns overwhelmingly start in the legal market before they are diverted to the illegal market,” mentioned Josh Scharff, basic counsel on the advocacy group Brady: United Against Gun Violence. “We need dealers who follow the law, and dealers who have had their licenses revoked are not that.”
The ATF has not launched any details about which particular sellers it has reinstated under its amnesty program.
To establish which sellers are back in enterprise, NCS used an AI device to investigate and evaluate federal firearms licenses revoked under Biden with these now licensed under Trump. NCS then independently verified these findings and which of these shops had the identical or linked possession.
NCS additionally analyzed warning notices generally known as a “Demand Letter 2,” or DL2 letters, despatched under a Biden-era coverage to shops with 25 or extra weapons recovered at crime scenes over the prior yr, inside three years of after they’d been bought.
The Trump administration ended that program.
Leider, the ATF basic counsel, disputed the importance of the DL2 letters, telling NCS “if you sell enough guns, you’re going to wind up on that list.” He mentioned ATF paused this system “after a campaign by gun-control advocates to target the dealers who were involved.”
The Outdoorsman’s Attic ran afoul of the ATF when an inspector discovered that William Paddock, its proprietor, repeatedly helped Leonel Castillo, a convicted felon, conduct unlawful on-line gun raffles. The ATF alleged in court docket paperwork that Castillo would purchase weapons from the store, which might then ship them on to the winners of Castillo’s raffles – successfully serving to Castillo deal firearms with no license. An ATF investigator additionally mentioned that Paddock falsified information to make it seem as if 15 weapons Castillo supplied for the store to ship to raffle winners had been introduced by two different males.
An ATF officer testified in court docket that Castillo, who’s at the moment serving a 30-month federal sentence for unlawful gun dealing, instructed him that he had personally proven Paddock movies of unlawful gun raffles he was conducting, and had instructed Paddock he was a felon.
The ATF revoked the gun store’s federal firearms license in November 2024 after discovering 16 violations of federal legislation.
Paddock fought the revocation order in federal court docket; and final August, after Trump took workplace, DOJ dismissed the case and ATF granted the store a brand new license.
Paddock declined to remark. In court docket filings, he argued that Castillo lied to ATF investigators. At the revocation listening to, Paddock testified that he hadn’t identified it was unlawful to assist Castillo raffle weapons as a personal particular person for revenue.
Some different shops now working once more embody: Wessel Gun Shop, in Warren, Michigan, which acquired DL2 letters 4 years working (that means at the very least 100 crime weapons had been traced to that store over these 4 years); and Tampa Tactical Supply in Riverview, Florida, the place at the very least 75 crime weapons had been traced back over a three-year interval.
Posey Guns & Pawn, in Cleveland, Tennessee, had its license revoked in March 2023 after ATF discovered it knowingly bought a gun to a minor. It additionally did not await the outcomes of a background verify earlier than promoting a gun to a buyer who had been involuntarily dedicated to a psychological establishment or adjudicated as mentally ailing. Its house owners additionally dedicated 383 violations in filling out gun-transfer types, ATF discovered, and falsified information 4 occasions, together with twice to attempt to cowl up two lacking Glock pistols, amongst different violations. When ATF investigator Kevin Levesque contacted the alleged purchaser of the Glocks, the person mentioned he hadn’t purchased the weapons.
Gun store proprietor Terry Posey took the ATF to court docket, however in August 2023, a federal district court docket dominated that permitting the gun store to return to enterprise “has the potential to cause substantial harm to others,” as a result of its violations posed a danger to the general public.
In April 2024, one other federal district court docket decide sided with ATF, ruling that the proof of willfulness within the violations was “so one-sided” that no cheap jury might discover in any other case.
Posey Guns & Pawn is working once more with a brand new federal firearms license issued to Blake Posey, Terry Posey’s son. Blake Posey declined to touch upon ATF’s revocation of his father’s license, saying these points weren’t under his possession.
The Tactical Edge in Tennessee confronted a litany of violations as ATF inspected the store thrice in 4 years.
When the store appealed its license revocation in 2022, an ATF listening to officer denied it and mentioned a specific concern was the failure to conduct background checks, including the house owners described it as a “mistake” and “human error.”
The house owners sued in federal court docket, however their case was dismissed in December 2023.
By October 2025, although, the house owners introduced on Facebook that they had been back within the enterprise of promoting weapons with a clip from The Hangover, with Bradley Cooper’s character crowing, “We are back, baby. We are f**king back!”
Boswell, the co-owner, instructed NCS that he disagreed with the ATF findings and the court docket ruling. “There is no one who left with a gun who we didn’t perform a background check on,” he mentioned. “I feel like ATF uses their words a lot to hang people up.”
He mentioned the gun store lost greater than $3 million in income from being unable to make or promote weapons till they got their new license. He mentioned the store seems to be for warning indicators of straw consumers, however they’re not all the time simple to identify.
“It sounds like we just handed someone a gun and they walked out the door, and that’s not at all what happened,” he mentioned. “I’ve been doing this for 15 years. We would never risk our entire livelihood over a single gun.”
Some different sellers who lost their licenses under Biden’s zero-tolerance coverage argue that they weren’t given correct leeway to repair violations. One Ohio seller, who requested to not be named, mentioned his license was revoked over what he known as “clerical errors” corresponding to incorrectly recording firearm serial numbers. “In all honesty, we made some mistakes,” he mentioned, including that, “during the Biden administration… they didn’t cut you much slack.”
Since reopening, he mentioned, “We’ve changed how we do things here… Anything that goes in or out of here, we double check and triple check.”
But some advocates pushed back on the concept federal violations are minor errors.
“Let’s say we forgot something in our taxes, right?” mentioned JaShawn Hill, who runs Chicago Survivors, a gaggle devoted to addressing gun violence. “We don’t get to say we were overwhelmed by paperwork or due dates or deadlines.”
If you’re a gun store proprietor, “You know what you’re responsible for, and I think there’s even a higher level of responsibility because of the lives that can be impacted due to your malpractice.”
Under Trump, new ATF leaders say adjustments on the company are a wanted corrective that assist deal with gun sellers extra pretty with out harming the general public.
“We did and always will take public safety into account,” mentioned Robert Cekada, the newly confirmed ATF director, at an April 29 information convention. “We believe these rules will not negatively impact public safety.”
Leider, ATF’s chief counsel, mentioned, “We take seriously the need to have proper oversight over dealers … We’re trying to make sure we deploy our resources with a focus on those who are actually engaged in business.”
Some former ATF officers and advocates, although, say that reinstating sellers with information of quite a few violations sends a transparent message that violating federal guidelines is tolerated.
“It is very frightening when these stores that have a history of legal violations can so easily reopen and continue irresponsible sales that endanger the public,” mentioned Lindsay Nichols, coverage director at Giffords, a gun violence prevention group.
During the primary Trump administration, license revocations had been decrease than under both Obama or Biden, “but they did take some,” mentioned Pam Hicks, former ATF chief counsel. “Every administration takes some, because there are always a handful of people that everyone agrees shouldn’t be in the business.”
Hicks expressed concern about the truth that ATF has stopped making revocation notices public.
Trevon Bosley, a violence-prevention advocate in Southwest Chicago who lost his brother to gun violence, expressed dismay that anybody may painting federal firearm violations as lower than extreme.
“Their ‘minor’ error … is the difference between me having my brother” or not, he mentioned. “I meet with so many families and so many siblings and so many young people who have lost their families because of these, what they consider ‘minor’ errors.”