New Gun Tracing Rules Could Blacklist Dealers and Restrict Federal Justice Grants

The Responsible Retirement of Law Enforcement Firearms Act of 2025 (RRLEF Act) is changing the rules for who gets federal money and how the public learns about guns used in crimes. Essentially, this bill ties eligibility for the major Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant Program—which funds state and local law enforcement—to new restrictions on firearm purchases, based on how often a dealer’s guns are traced back to a crime scene.

The New Grant Condition: Don’t Buy from the Blacklist

If a state or local agency wants to apply for or receive Byrne Grant funds, they must now certify that they will not buy or sell firearms to any licensed dealer that the ATF officially designates as a “covered licensed dealer.” This isn’t just a recommendation; it’s a mandatory promise required at the time of application. For a police department or a community non-profit relying on these funds, this means they have to immediately check the ATF’s list before making any firearm-related purchases or sales, or risk losing crucial federal funding.

Who Lands on the ‘Covered Dealer’ List?

The ATF gets the power to create this new blacklist based on trace data. A dealer makes the list if, in at least two of the last three years, the ATF’s National Tracing Center linked 25 or more firearms back to them that had a “short time-to-crime.” The bill defines “short time-to-crime” as a firearm recovered in a crime within three years or less of when the dealer last sold it retail. Think of it like this: if a gun is bought legally on Monday and recovered at a crime scene by Wednesday—and this happens 25 times a year—that dealer is a candidate for the restricted list. The ATF must publish this list of restricted dealers publicly on their website every year.

This provision is a big deal for licensed gun dealers. While the ATF tracing data doesn't necessarily mean the dealer did anything wrong (the gun could have been stolen or resold illegally), the sheer volume of crime guns traced back to their store puts them on a federally restricted list. For a high-volume dealer, this could mean losing business from every organization that relies on federal justice grants, potentially impacting their bottom line significantly, even if all their sales were perfectly legal.

More Data, More Transparency

Beyond restricting grant eligibility, the RRLEF Act mandates a major increase in transparency regarding gun tracing data. First, the ATF must now inform any state or local law enforcement agency if a gun they previously transferred (say, selling off old inventory) was later traced as being used in a crime. This helps local agencies better understand where their retired equipment ends up.

Crucially, the bill also removes several older, years-long restrictions that Congress had previously put in place, which limited the ATF’s ability to publicly share its gun tracing database information. By striking those old limitations, the bill makes the new public disclosure rules—including the annual posting of the restricted dealer list—permanent and less constrained. This means researchers, journalists, and the public will have access to more detailed information about the flow of crime guns than before, which is a major win for transparency advocates.