The “pause” came from the Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security. It does not affect Israel, Ukraine and the countries covered by the Wassenaar Arrangement, and exports to foreign governments will continue.
However, the Biden administration’s move encompasses the commercial sale of semiautomatic and standard firearms to some of the major world markets supplied by U.S. manufacturers.
Nations such as Brazil, Thailand and Guatemala will not receive weapons for the 90-day period.
The Commerce Department gave a partial explanation for the pause. “The review will be conducted with urgency and will enable the Department to more effectively assess and mitigate the risk of firearms being diverted to entities or activities that promote regional instability, violate human rights or fuel criminal activities.”
Someone should notify the ATF of these concerns as it apparently has no qualms over moving arms into Mexico.
The sad truth is that the pause is just another in a long series of acts by the current administration to bring the hammer down on the gun industry and by extension the Second Amendment. The list of attempts to suppress gun rights is long and continually growing.
This latest jab at the industry is just more blowback from gun control advocates upset over an administrative action late in the Trump administration. In 2020, oversight for gun exports was removed from State Department bureaucrats who consistently leaned against the industry.
Instead, it now resides with the Commerce Department, which by its very nature is more friendly to business concerns.
This move is by far the most drastic taken by the new curators of gun exports, and it is apparently in response to a series of reports by rabidly anti-gun Bloomberg. The outlet chided Washington for “exporting” U.S. “gun culture,” and apparently it found a receptive audience.
