I Carried an FBI Badge for 25 Years. Trump’s New Gun Rules Will Cost Lives.

By suing California over machine-gun conversion rules and fighting assault weapon bans in Virginia and Colorado, the administration has abandoned "states' rights" to appease big-money lobbyists.

Frank Figliuzzi hosts The Frank Figliuzzi Show on Lincoln Square. He is an FBI Assistant Director (retired); 25-year veteran Special Agent; and author of the national bestseller, The FBI Way, and Long Haul: Hunting the Highway Serial Killers. Subscribe to his Substack.

I’m a gun owner. I carried a badge and a pistol for 25 years and received some of the best firearms training in the world throughout my FBI tenure. My career and investigative experience inform what I’m about to say.

Donald Trump’s recent actions will make us less safe and cost lives. Ask most reasonable gun owners, including Trump voters, if they think people with mental illness should purchase guns, or if we should crack down on illegal gun sales, or if gun dealers who falsify records and skip background checks should be punished. They’ll give you a sane, reasonable answer that errs on the side of safety.

That’s not what Trump believes.

The Trump administration is now jettisoning over 35 gun regulations, returning gun ownership to certain mentally ill people, and calling quits on efforts to end illegal gun sales. Trump seems hell bent on doing everything he can to go against his own reasonable gun owning supporters and cater to the big money NRA and gun lobbyists who have spent millions of dollars on campaign ads and on get out the vote efforts on his behalf. Trump’s team has already eliminated major gun safety policies, including a zero-tolerance approach toward gun dealers who keep breaking the law. As noted in the New York Times:

“The more than three dozen rules that it has moved to eliminate would raise the legal threshold for revoking a dealer’s license; extend gun rights to buyers who had faced restrictions because of mental illness or inability to manage their own finances; and end extra scrutiny of stabilizing braces, gun accessories that have been used in mass shootings to lethal effect.”