The Trace is once again trying to dress up an old regulatory power grab as a fresh “public safety” argument, this time claiming Biden’s “engaged in the business” rule is simply about stopping unlicensed dealers who “should already know” they’re breaking the law. What the piece conveniently skips is that the rule lowers the threshold for what counts as being “in the business” to little more than making “a profit” on “a few” firearms, language so elastic that weekend traders, estate liquidators, and even hobbyists swapping guns at shows could suddenly need an FFL. By pretending the only people affected are obvious scofflaws, The Trace hopes readers won’t notice the rule’s real target: the gray-area sellers who have operated for decades without federal licensing precisely because Congress never defined “engaged in the business” that broadly.
For the 2A community the danger isn’t theoretical. Once the redefined standard is in place, ATF agents gain a ready-made justification to inspect private sales records, pressure credit-card companies and payment apps, and turn routine gun-show traffic into de-facto licensing checkpoints. The Trace’s framing also telegraphs the next step: if the rule survives court challenges, expect follow-on guidance that treats any online listing with a price above cost as “business activity,” effectively crowdsourcing enforcement through data brokers and social-media monitoring. That’s why groups like the NRA-ILA and GOA are already lining up litigation; they understand that redefining a single phrase can criminalize conduct Congress deliberately left outside the Gun Control Act.
The larger implication is that this is less about plugging a loophole than about normalizing the idea that any transfer not routed through an FFL is presumptively suspect. If that premise takes hold, future administrations—Republican or Democrat—will have precedent to ratchet the definition even tighter, turning the Second Amendment’s protection of “the people” into a permission slip doled out by bureaucrats. The Trace can call it enforcement; the rest of us recognize it as the slow-motion conversion of a constitutional right into a heavily regulated privilege.
