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All right, guys. This is something I rarely ever do, but this is a great interview. My friend, my good friend, Sir Michael Singleton, sat down with the new ATF director, Robert Sakata, and the chief counsel for ATF, Robert Leiter. And this was a wide-ranging, no-holds-barred interview. And these guys were talking about stabilizing braces, rolling back dozens of burdensome rules, trace data, transparency. And get this, they actually sound kind of like they respect the Second Amendment and the Constitution. I’ve been hammering ATF for well over a decade on this channel about their rulemaking by fiat and their war on pistol braces or just American citizens.

But this, this feels different. Stick around with me, because I’m going to walk you through some of the best parts of this interview, show you some clips that you need to see, and then give you my straight Second Amendment take on what this all means for us as gun owners. Before we dive in again, massive credit to my friend, Sir Michael Singleton, for landing this exclusive. The full unedited version is available right now on the We The Free Network. Go watch the whole thing. When we’re done here, it’s worth every minute of the interview to watch it.

So here we go. All right. So like I said, Sherman’s been killing it over at We The Free and Guns Out TV, giving us unfiltered firearms content the mainstream doesn’t touch. He sat down with these guys and asked some real questions. So we’ll start with the intro to the new ATF director, Robert Sakata, and chief counsel, Robert Leiter, in case you don’t even know who they are. You came from humble beginnings. Yes. I mean, your story, quite frankly, is the story of, I would say, the vast majority of Americans, hardworking, two-parent household, waking up every single day, sometimes working 60, 70, 80 hours a week, hoping that their hard work will allow their kids to ascertain the dreams that they literally dream about every single night.

You go hunting with your dad, young kid, he’s instilling in you the ideas of freedom, the importance of firearms, and the importance of firearms ownership in terms of keeping a bad government at bay, which he saw in Yugoslavia, the reason he came to the United States. At what point in that experience did you realize, okay, there’s something about firearms ownership and this culture that’s really tethered into what America is? At what point did you really realize that were you connected those two dots? I would say, at the point, I became a police officer at 20.

I was hired at 28 and a half. Yeah, I was 20 and a half years old, and the neighborhood that I lived in was primarily made up of folks from Eastern Europe, and all of them were similar to my dad, right? The folks were either into hunting or fishing or not, but what they were definitely into was the respect for our country allowed them to have, which they did not have in their own countries that they came from, and you can pick one from Eastern Europe because there was many that came from.

Crime was rampant in the early 90s. Homicides were up in the high 2000s, and people were afraid. It was very challenging to get a pistol permit in New York City. And if you’re poor, living in Harlem or any of those areas, you don’t have the names. You might not have the budget to do that, and let alone take a safety class, let alone apply for a permit and make it through the screening process. And there was only three types. There was a premise permit, a target permit, or a carry permit, and very few people out of a city of eight million.

And I’d say, when I’m very few, less than a couple thousand actually had the carry permit at the time. All right, so right out of the gate, it seems like these aren’t your typical DC bureaucrats. Director Sakata isn’t some anti-gun political appointee. The man was talking about building AR platforms with his son, and how firearms have been part of his life forever. He and Lider both come across as actual gun guys who shoot recreationally. And I think that matters, because when the guy running ATF remembers what it’s like to be a regular American exercising his Second Amendment rights, it changes the whole culture of the agency, I hope.

I am cautiously optimistic about this kind of leadership, something ATF should have had since day one. And one of the most important things that they address is the pistol brace rule. Remember, I’ve done videos about this for years, telling you about the implementation of it, the worksheet, how nobody knew what was going to qualify as an SBR versus a pistol brace, the court battle, the injunctions, the vacator of the rule, and then how ATF said they could enforce it anyway. And now we have new leadership, and this is what they say.

And ATF never did a good job telling people who we are and what we do. Some of the issues, and Robert could explain deeper, is in the creation of the laws that are surrounding firearms too. There’s a lot of ambiguity in some of the laws, and in the effort to try to make clarity, sometimes it all came out as mud. And then there was some lack of transparency over the years where there was internal policies that were not communicated back to the public, and the public didn’t know where we stood. So much so, as a field agent, when I was working out in the field, there were some policies, in particular, as it related to, maybe something we’ll talk about, short-browed firearms.

We didn’t know exactly where we stood either at times, and that’s not a good place. When we don’t know, and the public doesn’t know, then that’s something that’s overtly telling you there’s a major gap that needs to be filled, not only with regulations, but also with federal laws. The challenge there is I could work on one side, I could provide technical expertise and advice on the statutory side, but we don’t get to rewrite the statute. Now, it was certainly the case that there were some people, including some people in some high-level positions, who held fairly strong anti-Second Amendment views, and that would come out in the policies.

Now, when I got here, I had both the blessing and the curse of being an outsider, and so I had a list of things that didn’t make sense to me, and so I came in here, I started saying, okay, this is how we’re operating. Why are we operating this way? Can we change it? And I started almost immediately. I mean, I think it’s pretty good. They flat out talk about rolling back that ridiculous stabilizing brace rule that turned millions of law-abiding Americans into potential felons overnight. Now, you remember, guys, I’ve covered it here multiple times.

One day, your brace pistol’s legal. The next day, ATF’s reclassifying it as a short-barreled rifle, because some bureaucrat named, actually, it was Joe Biden, decided that that strap makes it shouldered. It’s stupid. And Director Sakata and Rob Leiter made it crystal clear that these rules had zero impact on actual criminals and everything to do with burdening honest gun owners. And that’s the kind of common sense enforcement we’ve been demanding. This is a massive Second Amendment victory, I think. The fact that they’re actually coming out and saying this on record, plain and simple, that would have never happened before.

So, got to give credit where credit is due, and I’ll still burn them when they need to be burnt as well. Let’s see what else happened. That ambiguity. I want you to get into that because I think you’re making a very nuanced point. Talk about why that is so important for those who conduct business in the industry. It is important to not only say what we’re doing, but why we’re doing it. And for a few reasons. One, it ensures that what we’re doing is lawful. When we regulate, we’re not supposed to be just creating our own law.

Those regulations are supposed to be implementing decisions that Congress has made. So, we have to make sure that what we’re doing is lawful. Second is consistency. The agency has flip-flop positions on a number of issues throughout the years, both from the industry’s perspective and the consumer’s perspective. You need a stable regulatory framework. And when you’re flipping without explanation, that doesn’t let people have the stability that they need to make decisions either in their business or on the consumer side. And so, it was important to come in and not just fix the underlying decisions, but also to create a regulatory atmosphere where we’re saying, here’s what we’re doing, here’s why we’re doing it, and here’s why we think it’s lawful.

In case you weren’t following along, one of the very first things Director Sakata did after his confirmation, literally like two minutes after he’s confirmed by the Senate, was to sign off on 34 new rule changes designed to reduce the burden on gun owners, dealers, and manufacturers. 34. That’s not incremental. That’s a full-court press to get ATF out of the business of making life harder for people who follow the law. I still think rulemaking is not what the founders ever okayed or dreamt of or were cool with, but I have begun breaking all of these new rule proposals down with detailed videos for you and have curated a playlist as well.

Watch those and let me know what you think of them. Now, they’re talking about modernizing regulations that haven’t kept up with technology, fixing definitions that were vague enough to make any gun owner wonder, am I a felon tomorrow? And again, I’ll make a note that ATF can’t change the definition, only Congress can. And I’ve been saying it for years, the ATF, under the last couple of administrations, was writing law through executive fiat instead of enforcing law. And this is the Constitution working the way it’s supposed to, if we get back to that here with this new leadership role.

This part right here is what I’ve been preaching on this channel forever. They’re talking about transparency on trace data and making sure that enforcement actually goes after the bad guys instead of harassing the good guys who just want to build a rifle or buy a brace. And one of the best lines in the whole interview, and you got to hear it straight from them, is essentially these rules have no bearing on criminals. You’re impacting law-abiding folks. That’s it. That’s the entire problem with the last decade plus of ATF rulemaking in one sentence.

As a constitutionalist, I love seeing the agency finally acknowledge that the Second Amendment isn’t a second-class right. We’re not the enemy, the criminals are. I’d also like to see them target the unconstitutional and illegal National Firearms Act. Towards the end, they get real personal and it’s powerful. Director Staccata talks about the values that his father instilled and why the Second Amendment matters to him as an American. And you can tell this isn’t just a job for him. It seems like he really believes this stuff. Again, cautiously optimistic, right? But they’re also realistic in this interview.

They know a future administration could try to undo all this progress. And that’s why elections matter, guys and gals. That’s why we have to stay vigilant and keep holding every single agency accountable to the Constitution. Now let’s cut through some of the noise. As someone who’s covered every major ATF overreach on this channel, braces, lowers, vertical foregrips, you name it, I can tell you that this interview represents a shift. I hope it’s a legitimate shift. It’s not perfection, but it’s a step towards respecting the rights of law-abiding citizens like you and I.

Now let me be crystal clear. I am not saying that the ATF has now earned my trust, nor should they have your trust blindly. Not at all. They have to earn that. There’s a lot of things that they have to undo to even get into that realm. But this might be the most positive Second Amendment step the ATF has ever taken in its entire history of unconstitutional existence. The Constitution doesn’t give the ATF the power to rewrite the definition of a firearm every time a new administration takes office. What we’re seeing here is the agency finally focusing on criminals instead of turning millions of Americans into felons for owning a piece of plastic or a velcro strap.

What the Founders intended is government that protects rights instead of infringing them. Again, it’s like the fourth time I’m going to say it. I’m cautiously optimistic, but I’m also keeping my eyes wide open. We’ve seen agencies flip-flop before. They do it all the time. That’s why I always say actions speak louder than words, and that’s why we stay armed, informed, and involved. If you are a gun owner in America, this should feel like a potential breath of fresh air, but it only lasts if we keep the pressure on and make sure the next election reinforces these gains.

You know, there’s a couple things that I’ve been reading in the rules that I don’t like. They’re not all positive in my point of view, but not everybody thinks the way I do. Folks, Sir Michael Singleton conducted a killer interview with ATF Director Robert Cicotta and Chief Counsel Robert Leiter. Again, go watch the entire thing on the We The Free Network. I wanted to make you aware of it. Send you over there. Shirm, you did an outstanding job, brother. If you want more content like this, honest 2A news, then zero corporate media spin, then hit that subscribe button, ring the bell, and drop a comment down below.

Is this the start of real change at ATF, or are you still skeptical? Let me know. And as always, stay safe, stay armed, and stay free, and keep fighting for our God-given rights under the Constitution. I’ll see you in the next one. Take care. you
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