Brady Warns of Increased Global Instability and Endangered Lives from New Trump Administration Gun Industry Rule

Commerce Department regulation eliminates key oversight of U.S.-sourced exports of firearms to nations abroad and increases ability for drug cartels, gangs, and terrorist networks to obtain illicit weapons

WASHINGTON, D.C., September 30, 2025 — Today, the Trump administration’s Department of Commerce eliminated policies established in 2024 by the Biden-Harris administration to increase safeguards and transparency for firearm exports to non-government entities in foreign countries and reign in the dangers of the exporting of assault weapons abroad. These policies included: reducing the length of license timing to one year to account for shifting security dynamics in foreign countries, creating a list of 36 countries with a presumption of denial for civilian export licenses due to national security and human rights concerns, and increasing oversight and review standards for export license applications to ensure that weapons exports are in line with U.S. national security interests. 

The original rule by the Biden-Harris administration was implemented following a report that linked legally exported U.S. guns to higher rates of crime and violence across the world, including the massacre of school children and political assassinations that create regional instability.

Brady, the nation’s leading gun violence prevention organization, released the following statement criticizing the rule and warning of future global instability.  

Brady President Kris Brown said:

No American will have an easier time exercising their Second Amendment rights from today’s policy change. In fact, it’s the pocketbooks of the Trump administration’s gun industry donors and friends that will benefit from today’s callous, destabilizing rule change to export our gun crisis abroad. While the American gun industry gets to sell more firearms, this new policy vastly increases the risk of U.S. manufactured firearms, including military-style weapons, being diverted to drug cartels, criminal groups, gangs, terrorist networks, and other dangerous groups around the world. By rolling back these measures back, President Trump is putting innocent lives across the globe at risk and is removing a safety mechanism to protect U.S. national security interests both here and abroad. 

Further — as the president and ICE pursue a mass deportation scheme, his actions today are increasing the supply of U.S.-sourced firearms to South and Central America, which empower criminal cartels and have resulted in the displacement of millions of people — many of whom seek refuge here. And while he and his Secretary of Defense burden military officers to leave their posts and travel to Washington, D.C., to hear speeches, today’s actions will increase the illicit supply of firearms abroad and endanger U.S. service members.

Once again, the Trump administration is highlighting that they will always pad the bottom lines of gun industry CEOs over protecting public safety and national security.